Natural Blues
by wlpr
Summary: Arthur and Dom are in the Venezuelan rain forest. Eames is their guide. This work is now complete.
1. Chapter 1 Before That Sun Goes Down

_The first thing he sees when his eyes snap open is the black crucifix on the opposite wall. Below it is a simple wooden table, carrying a long white candle placed on a clay saucer and a miniature statue of the Blessed Virgin, the varnish of her lapis lazuli frock, alligatored and patched, reflecting the flickering light of the candle._

_Arthur's first thoughts awake are always physical. He thinks: It's nice to sleep on a bed, not on the rough floor, not on the wet ground, not in a hammock or an airplane armchair, however comfortable it might seem. It's nice to sleep on clean sheets, under a warm comforter, knowing that you won't have to get up and run somewhere as soon as you wake up. Arthur hauls himself up, brushing away the hair that falls into his eyes and looks around the room. On the bed by the window Cobb is waiting for him, quiet and discreet as usual. He is fully dressed, and reading the local newspaper he has, no doubt, brought all the way down from Caracas. It is almost two weeks old. Cobb lifts his eyes from the wrinkled page and looks at Arthur over his reading glasses. It's already morning, the first light is creeping out from under red-and green-painted shutters on a small window. Time to move out._

xxx

If Arthur had to use one word to describe this whole expedition they have set out upon, this word would be 'infuriating'. As soon as Arthur's shoes touched the uneven asphalt covering the runway of Simon Bolivar International Airport, and the humid Venezuelan air enveloped him like a damp cloth, leaving a sheen of moisture on his face and neck, he knew that their journey was a lost cause. They would never find Mal, and if they found her, it would be her bones. However, Arthur was not prone to premonitions and generally only trusted things he could actually see and touch. So, he hoisted his bag from a dust-covered conveyor belt, produced his passport and boarding pass to a frowning, moustached customs official, and went on to hail a taxi.

He found Cobb in the study, crouched over a sea of paper on Mal's desk, his face dark, tanned, covered with a two-day-old stubble. He looked very young and confused. _Like a child who got lost in a crowd,_ Arthur thought, squeezing Cobb's palm in a handshake.

They sat down that night over a bottle of brandy in the living room of the house the Cobbs had rented in a small gated community on the south east edge of Caracas, and Cobb told him his tale of woe. He spoke in a blank, flat voice, and seemed detached, almost numbed by the shock.

Three days before Cobb had got a call from Yusuf Attal, the head of the chemical research lab Mal collaborated with in Caracas. Attal had informed him, a grave concern in his voice, that a small party that was supposed to bring Mal from a remote village in the Amazon where she had been studying the methods of sleep induction used by the local curers, had gotten back without her. Dom called Dr. Cobol, his and Mal's employer, and owner of Somnus Labs. It was midnight in New York, but the call was answered. And Arthur was dispatched, plucked from the comfort of his apartment, from the enjoyable, well-oiled routine of his post as the head of security at Los-Angeles branch of Cobol Engineering. That Los-Angeles office was really just a cover for a group of heavily secured labs in the nowhere lands of San Bernardino County, that over the past three years had been working on the new sedative that could eventually prove to be a breakthrough in medical science.

Dom Cobb had been and still was head of those labs, Arthur's direct superior, the only link between him and Cobol, who owned them all. Mal was Dom's wife and right hand in his research. Rumor had it she, and not Cobb, was the real genius behind the new sedative. To Arthur she was someone he did not really know. Looking back he could not say he knew Cobb that well either in the first place. But knowing Mal was not really necessary for the job. She was nice, and French, and his friend's wife. She called Arthur 'joyeux gamin' when she wanted to please him and 'connard' when she was annoyed. Arthur thought they got on pretty well.

In January of that year he had escorted Mal to her flight for Caracas, and in May he received a call from Jonathan Cobol, telling him to sharpen his sword and get ready to shake off all that fat he had accumulated while relaxing on Somnus' laurels, as he was going to Venezuela to look for Mrs. Cobb.

When they disconnected, Arthur stared at the receiver for a long second, trying to suppress the mild irritation that was swelling in his chest at the thought of all the meetings that had to be postponed or canceled, and all the plans that were ruined for another week, if not weeks. He briefly considered calling back and offering a decent replacement to send to Venezuela in lieu of himself. Then, he thought of the horrifying, vindictive home tyrant that was Mal, and the spineless, mostly indifferent slug that was his boss Dominic, and of the two little impiété-spewing terrors that were Cobbs' children, and he knew he had to go to Caracas. He would not be able to forgive himself if he let them down. Needless to say, Arthur did not own a sword, nor was he any fatter than three years before when he had been first employed by Somnus. So he spent the next few minutes contemplating the advantages of bringing his own guns against acquiring new ones at the point of his destination.

Now back to the evening in Caracas. The things that Cobb told him about Mal's stay there left Arthur scratching his head. Cobb arrived at Mal's house two days before Arthur, he spoke with Attal whom he then called simply 'Yusuf' and learned that over the past few weeks Mal had been staying in the house of a Father Coriolano Esquivo in the small mission of Barlovento, near Brazilian border, where she continued her research, concentrating namely on the potions used by the village's curer, a certain Dona Mercedes. The fact that Dom had learned all that from Yusuf and not from Mal herself told Arthur everything he needed to know about the actual state of Cobb's marriage.

A week before her disappearance, Mal and Dona Mercedes, accompanied by two Yanomami guides set off on a trip to the sacred cave, frequented by curers for the purpose of acquiring divine wisdom and inspiration. The guides were supposed to meet them three days later, at the clearing half a mile north of the mountain. The Yamanomi arrived at the meeting point at the scheduled time and waited for twenty-four hours. Mal and the curer did not appear. The men returned to the village and informed Father Coriolano of the disappearance. They never dared to go and search around the mountain, for they were forbidden by the law from setting foot on the sacred soil. Father Coriolano did not bother informing the police, he phoned Yusuf straight away, and Yusuf alerted their employer, and then Cobb. Such was Dom's story.

At Dom's request, Arthur looked through Mal's notes, handwritten and printed out from the files on her laptop. To say that Arthur was shocked would be an understatement. He noticed that Mal had worked mostly with three curers – two males from Caracas and Dona Mercedes in Barlovento – and the methods the three of them suggested for the cure of, for example, cancer included, among other things, sitting down in a bath full of rubbing alcohol, with a picture of Virgen Maria de Guadalupe and addressing the lady in question in a wholehearted prayer, asking her for deliverance of the pain – and wait for it – lighting up three white candles in her honor afterwards. Arthur had never been the one endowed with vivid imagination, but even he could imagine what might have happened if one of the aforementioned candles fell into the bath full of rubbing alcohol. From that moment on, Arthur's research of Mal's materials turned quite superficial, as he'd realized he was not going to find anything important in her papers.

By morning they had come up with a plan. They were going to fly to the mission, find a guide daring enough to travel with them to the mountain or wherever it was that Mal had disappeared, and there look for the women. It was a good plan, but it encountered some unexpected obstacles.

xxx

They were flown to the village by an overly enthusiastic friend of Yusuf's who tried to show-off the beauty of his land, and in doing so used all the means at his disposal. The sleek, brand-new four-seat Cessna glided over the boundless sea of green with deceptive ease only to descend rapidly and without any warning, as they approached the River, because the pilot wished to demonstrate them the marvels of the wildlife.

Arthur was not interested in crocodiles and giant turtles basking on the shores of the muddy, noisy stream below. He threw up into a sick bag after the first attempt at sightseeing and promised Yusuf's friend to withhold half of the agreed payment if he repeated the trick. The threat worked, and the journey continued without any further misunderstandings.

Over the course of the flight Cobb kept silent in the seat next to Arthur's, the look in his eyes drawn inwards, seemingly unperturbed by the flying technique of their pilot.

They arrived to Barlovento short before lunch. Father Coriolano, a brown-faced, bushy-eyebrowed old man, had been waiting for them in a decrepit old Ford at the end of a cleared, asphalted strip of land. The runway was a bald spot in the middle of the rainforest.

In his broken English, Father Coriolano let them know that a small party of villagers went into the jungle the previous day calling for Dona Mercedes and Mal. They did not set foot on the sacred soil of shamans, but they combed the neighboring forest. As Arthur had expected, the villagers found nothing.

Barlovento was a group of five shabonos, surrounding the village square, in the middle of which stood an ancient church and a small house, home of Father Coriolano. The jungle behind the church had been cleared; hot houses and open vegetable gardens catered to the needs of the village. Less than half a mile to the north of the village a few fishing boats rocked on the murky waters of the River.

The villagers were what Arthur had expected them to be: short, stocky men, often clad in nothing but a loincloth or ragged old pants, some of them strolling around stark naked, their dicks held up by a string tied loosely around the waist; women were also short, and mostly fat, with close cropped sleek hair that made their heads look like bricks. They wore old, worn out dresses or simply went topless, their thick bottoms stuck in makeshift skirts or even men's pants.

They left their bags in Father Coriolano's house and went looking for a guide. This was when they encountered the obstacles. The priest was telling the truth: none of the villagers who usually provided their services to tourists traveling around the Amazon agreed to accompany them to the mountain.

Their last resort, Coriolano said, were 'racionales', former gold miners who had come to the Amazon from all the corners of the world and stayed for good, having lost their souls in the jungle. Arthur wanted to quip about yet another legend, but the look on Cobb's face made him hold his tongue.

The 'Racionales' of the village were four emaciated old men, wearing colorless rags that no Yanomamo would disgrace himself with. They looked European and spoke some sort of distorted Spanish that even Coriolano had trouble understanding. They sat in the sun, propped against the asbestos-covered wall of a remote shabono beyond which began the moving, living sea of the jungle. In contrast to the Yanomami, Arthur had noted, the racionales had absolutely no other occupation, save for smoking pipes and talking, to help them kill time. The sun was hot and high in the sky, the time of siesta fast approaching. They needed to hurry before Barlovento fell into the mandatory three hours of afternoon sleep.

The old men listened to Coriolano, their expressions ranging from perplexed to blank; two of them resumed the conversation they had been having as soon as the priest stopped talking. The oldest of the men simply shook the white-bearded head and sucked on his pipe, and the fourth looked at Cobb and said in French, "Your wife was an idiot. No one goes to the land of shamans. Because if they do, they get killed. Nobody in their right mind will take you there." He pointed his finger at a section of shabono that had a piece of washed-out purple fabric hanging over the entrance. "Go see old Angelica's son. He is short on dope and he has not gone to Caracas for a very long time. He might take you. Junkies are crazy like that."

xxx

When they approached the appointed section of shabono and announced themselves by knocking on the wooden pole supporting the thatched roof, a tiny old woman appeared from behind the purple rag and stared at them short-sightedly, her watery eyes moving from Father Coriolano to Cobb and finally Arthur. She wore a rough-cut dress which was too short on the front and hang low on the back making her look pregnant. Thin white hair covered her head like dandelion fuzz, and her skin was brown and as wrinkled as a baked apple. As the priest began retelling their story, Anjelica groped behind the curtain, took out a half-finished woven basket, and sat down on the porch in front of them. Her small hands worked on the weave as she listened to Coriolano with far greater attention than anyone they had addressed that day.

When the priest was finished, she looked at Cobb and said in Spanish, "I'll ask if my son could help you. He's been lying on his back way too long." Then she put the basket down and gestured them to follow her into the hut.

Anjelica's home was a rectangular space with a slowly burning hearth a few steps away from the entrance. The walls of the hut were made of thatched leaves like the roof of the shabono, voices of women, children crying could be heard from behind the flimsy barrier.

Their hostess led them to the back of the hut, bypassing an old, shabby chest with a pile of clay bowls on it – the kitchen. They entered a small space in the back which probably served as a cellar with hands of dried fruit and cured fish hanging from the hooks and strings on the walls. As they entered the room, Cobb wrinkled his nose and gave Arthur a knowing look. The smell of fish and herbs which had permeated the wall of the cellar was overpowered by a far more potent, acridly sweet stench of a recently smoked joint.

On the bare soil floor, near the back entrance of the hut, spread on a yellow pool float, slept a mop-headed, bearded man of an uncertain age. He was lying on his stomach, snoring loudly and drooling in his sleep. The only article of clothing he had on were faded, blue briefs that hung low on his surprisingly toned ass. He was white, around Arthur's height, maybe a tad taller. His hair was sun bleached and his beard was ginger. The visible part of his left shoulder bore a tattoo of a crucifix with the name 'Kelli' and the date '26.06.2005' incused below.

On the floor in the gap between the wall and the pool float stood a large gray backpack and a shabby blue funboard that in this environment looked as alien as a spaceship. _Okay,_ Arthur thought, _here's a guy who likes his colors blue and brings a surfboard to the Amazon rainforest. Interesting._

Anjelica bent down mumbling something under her nose and poked her son on his tanned back. The man snorted in his sleep and simply turned over. The old woman sighed and beckoned to Arthur and Dom. Together they grabbed the sleeper by the shoulders and rolled him over on his back. It wasn't easy as the guy turned out to be heavy and bulky. They both sprang back right away as the smell of old sweat and male musk hit their nostrils. Anjelica drew open the bamboo curtain that covered the back entrance of the hut to let in some fresh air. The direct sunlight fell on the man's body.

And then Arthur froze, because he saw something he didn't like at all.

The guy's chest was covered in more hideous tattoos, one of them namely picturing the Union Jack, but it was his arms and stomach that set off a small alarm in Arthur's head. Arthur hated wounds. He thought allowing yourself to get shot or knifed on duty was the highest degree of unprofessionalism, the sign of stupidity or lack of necessary skill. He was once shot in the leg when he was twenty and reckless. When the weather changed, the bone ached under the scar. As Arthur grew older, he made sure another wound never happened.

Now then, on the chest of the man spread on the floor in front of him, Arthur saw two fresh – not older than a year – scars from gunshot wounds. He wondered where the bullets might have gone in the man's body as he hadn't noticed any exit points on the guy's back or sides. On the left side of his torso, right below the ribs, Arthur saw a long ugly scar that ran from the solar plexus all the way to the back and must have crossed both the man's liver and kidney. And finally, the man's arms were covered with a pale web of small scars, barely visible, that started thick on his hands, and thinned on the forearms only to become more pronounced around his underarms and chest. _This is what happens when you get hit by a beehive, while wearing an old design Interceptor, _Arthur thought. He had seen plenty of scars like that in his youth._ He must have managed to cover the face with his hands before the impact, that's why it's mostly intact. Fascinating._

At this moment Anjelica entered the room carrying in her wiry hands a rusty pail half full of water. She approached the pool float and poured some of the muddy liquid on the sleeper's face. The man yelled, choked on the water and opened his eyes. He squinted at them in the sunlight that fell on his face and asked,"What do you want?" in an accented voice. _Australian?_ Arthur thought,_ South African?_

Anjelica began retelling Cobb's story. As the man listened, his gaze focused briefly on Arthur and then lingered on Cobb's face. He interrupted the old woman mid-sentence, raising his hand. "Too late," he mumbled. "Tomorrow. Come tomorrow." Having said that, he scratched his nose, closed his eyes and yawned which seemed to be more of a nervous tick. Then he turned his back on them and snored.

Arthur and Cobb stared at each other for a second, then Dom reached out for the man, spitting out curses. He was stopped by the old Indian who put a comforting hand on his shoulder. She shook her head and repeated the sleeper's words with startling finality, "Come tomorrow. He promised."

They had to leave and lose several more precious hours, the time they did not really have. Arthur's hands itched for that gray backpack tucked against the thatched wall of the hut. But the moment wasn't right.

Back at Coriolano's house he and Cobb had a brief argument about the possible course of action. Arthur proposed to hire the two villagers who'd served as guides to Mal, let the Indians take them to the meeting point, and from there proceed on their own. Arthur had his guns on him, they had been equipped with several maps of the territory and everything else necessary for a trip to the jungle. Cobb hesitated, which was understandable. They were going to look for two women, they needed to bring them back – be it dead or alive. Another pair of hands and eyes would prove vital under the circumstances.

A decision had to be made, so at dinner Arthur asked Coriolano what he knew about Anjelica's son.

"You mean Dave, her squatter," said the priest, picking crumbs of cassava bread off his plate. "He's been with the mission for three, maybe four months, and he hasn't done anything bad over that period of time. I can say that with certainty. Have you met Mr. Garth? Mr. Garth, he is American like you. He used to mine gold here many years ago. So Mr. Garth lives with a woman from our village in a house up the river. He and Etewa, who happens to be his wife's brother and one of our trackers, found Dave in the jungle on their way back from a Marikitare village. He had a fever. I suspect he had walked through the rainforest from the Colombian side. He said he was on his way to Caracas, when the illness struck him. We have a very well equipped infirmary here, so we kept him. When he got better, we placed him with Anjelica. She used to take care of him in the hospital. Her son, her real son, was killed during the Haximu Massacre back in 1993. This was when she came to live with us. She says Dave reminds her of Milagros to the point that she sometimes thinks he's returned to her. There is some resemblance between them, I agree."

"What is it that he's doing in the village?" Arthur asked sipping on a very bitter, very strong coffee that had been prepared by the priest himself.

"He comes and goes. To Caracas and back."

"Through the jungle?" Arthur doubted.

"There are many white people here who know the jungle." Coriolano said, scratching his chin. "Dave is a tracker and a guide. He and Etewa work for the tourists who come here on hunting trips. But I understand you want to know if he is trustworthy enough to come with you and look for your wife? " He stared questioningly at Cobb.

"If I'm paying someone to guide me through the rainforest I'd like to know everything about them and maybe more," said Dom who had kept silent listening to the conversation from a recliner in the corner."You mentioned he often goes to Caracas. Do you know why?"

"To buy weed," Coriolano said casually, "and to gamble. Barlovento is a small village. Here everything is in the open. Impossible to hide. We see each other clearly. Dave is a good man, with a kind heart. He is a 'racional', but he is one of us."

"'A good man' and 'a kind heart' are too vague the terms, don't you find?" Cobb asked later, when they were smoking on the porch of Coriolano's house. Arthur nodded. Anyway, they would go and try him in the morning. No matter how thin, this was still a chance for Malorie.

xxx

They entered the old woman's hut on a dark drizzly morning of the following day. The place looked deserted, Anjelica's hammock rocked empty in the cold draft. The owner of a kind heart was snoring peacefully where they had left him the previous day, looking like he had never moved, and the half empty pail of water still stood on the floor by the pool float.

Cobb slapped the man on the face several times to no apparent effect. Anjelica's squatter moaned at the slaps, but did not wake up.

This was it. This was fucking it. Arthur had had enough.

With a sure hand he stopped Dom from emptying the pail into the sleeper's face. Instead, he bent over the pool float and grabbed the sturdy gray backpack. He opened it and shook its contents out on the dusty floor. Down fell a toiletry kit spewing out a toothpaste tube and a brush, followed by a black pouch containing something that Arthur nearly mistook for a mobile phone but in reality turned out to be a GPS device, a giant Ziploc bag with clean clothes and a pair of black tennis shoes. On top of it landed an old, shabby passport that belonged to a certain Eames, Peter David, a citizen of New Zealand, born in 1977 in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. The front spread of the document bore a faded picture of a doe-eyed, big-eared youth in blue plaids who might or might not have been Anjelica's tenant. The rest of it were pages and pages of visas and entry clearances, mostly to the countries of South and Central America, the latest one being a business visa to Colombia which dated three years back.

The insides of the backpack were virginally clean, no trace of dust, not a single crumb. The zipped back compartment of the bag held a Victorinox SwissChamp, old but in a good condition, a black leather sheath with an Indian machete, ancient-looking but well-filed, and finally, yet another giant Ziploc, wrapped lovingly around an original – no thumb safety - SW40, complete with two 10Rounds. Arthur who used the latest Glock chuckled at this find. He searched on the very bottom of the back compartment and took out a neatly folded bundle of maps, held together with an elastic band. They were maps of Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil: road maps, printed in English on water-resistant paper, topographic renderings of the rainforest terrains in Spanish and Portuguese, some of them hand-drawn, all of them bearing comments and additions, done in blocky, clumsy handwriting.

Cobb frowned suspiciously at the gun, but Arthur felt unexpectedly relieved as he placed the bundled maps on top of it. His discovery made him feel like he'd dropped a mountain off his shoulders, it also made him pay closer attention to the surroundings. At the bottom end of the pool float he noticed a small pile of clothing that hadn't been there the day before. He fumbled through the pair of ragged jeans and the black t-shirt with a washed-off DMX applique on the chest. The clothes were damp, as if their owner had caught some of the rain that had fallen at night. On the bottom of the heap, stood a pair of worn-out snickers, their soles covered in caking wet mud.

Arthur was slow at the start, but once the decision was made he just moved forward, unstoppable. So he squatted near the pool float, slid his hand under its side that lay a bit higher than the rest of the plastic and pulled out – quite unsurprisingly – another zipped plastic bag, this one full of weed. He took the stash to the front of the hut where the hearth was smoldering at the entrance. He threw the bag on the burning coals and then settled down to wait on a rough wooden bench outside the porch. Dom walked out and sat down next to him, wound up and rubbing his hands nervously.

The smoke from the hearth became a synthetic stench as the plastic melted. It was soon eclipsed by the reek of burning dope. Arthur and Dom both had to cover their noses at the smell; worried heads of the villagers began popping out of the neighboring sections of the hut. Dom raised a calming hand at them, in a gesture imitating smoking. For a few minutes nothing else happened, and Arthur was prepared to admit defeat, go back to the hut and kill the fire before the sleeper died of asphyxiation. At this very moment a naked, bulky figure appeared from the back room, carrying the pail of water from the other day. The man threw the contents of the pail on the coals, stopping the burn. He lingered by the hearth, staring dolefully at the remains of his stash, absent-mindedly pushing his fingers through the scrubland of his beard.

He then walked out on the porch, pulling up the descending briefs as he went, and grimaced reprovingly at Arthur and Dom.

"You've burnt my weed," the guy stated with a philosophical calmness, as his eyes raked over their faces.

This look, cold and analyzing, gave Arthur an impression that each of them was being sized-up and placed in a niche. And thus, Dom was categorized as valuable and worth taking into the account, while Arthur himself was dismissed as unimportant and secondary. Arthur found this new feeling to be not only novel, but also highly irritating.

"The name's Eames," the man said, addressing Dom, "but you can call me Dave."

"Dominic Cobb," Dom shook the offered, tattooed hand. "We came to see you yesterday. We need a guide to take us to the Ashembo Mountain. My wife disappeared there five days ago."  
"I know," Eames scratched his beard, "the French girl. She went there with the old hag Mercedes a few days back. I remember you came. Sorry, I wasn't fit."

"The question is are you fit enough now to take us there?" Arthur asked, folding his hands over his chest.

"Oh yes, Coriolano came and spoke to me last night, after you left," the man informed. "I went out to check the routes, and..." He rubbed his mouth thoughtfully, then looked Cobb straight in the eyes.

"Mr. Cobb-," he began.

"Dom, just Dom."

"Dom, you do realize that your wife might be dead. She's been missing for five days. Do you think you'll cope if we don't find her or find her dead body?" he asked, staring at Dom with dark, searching eyes.

"Yes," Dom said, and went morbid white.

"In this case, we will go and look for Mrs. Cobb," Eames said decidedly. " I'll meet you at the boat house on the river in an hour. Wear some sturdy shoes, don't bring anything useless like another set of clothes, bring whatever firearms you might have, enough water for a day, repellents, and mosquito nets, and," – his eyes grazed over the cut of Arthur's jeans - "leave your PA behind."

Arthur felt the corners of his mouth quirk up on their own accord.

"Arthur is coming," Dom said at that somberly.

"And bringing on his lovely person two thousand American dollars – for the weed that he just burned and his own hammock, because I only have one extra," Eames finished, dismissively.

"Speaking of money. How much will you charge for your services?" Arthur asked, and the guide narrowed his eyes at him.

"I won't charge you," he answered,"but we will need a couple hundred dollars to pay my Yanomamo partner, and some more – for the bribes, or possibly ransom."

"What about your partner?" Dom wondered, leveling himself off the bench.

"He's gonna be your bodyguard," Eames said simply. "I went down the path last night. There was blood and some human body parts scattered over the eastern edge. Looks like a war is about to break off between Marikitare from the neighboring village and our folk. Some of our villagers will be missing their heads by the end of today, believe it or not. It's probably a good thing we're going now..."

xxx

"Do you believe what he said about the war?" Arthur asked later when he and Dom were re-packing the bags they were taking with them.

"I don't know what to think," Dom answered, stuffing a calabash with water into the side pocket of his backpack. "To me he looks trustworthy. We'd better ask Coriolano, if he knows anything about this. And where to get a hammock. For you."

It appeared the problem had solved itself, as Coriolano presented Arthur with a hammock and a black sheath with a brand new Gerber machete in it.

"You will need it in the jungle," he said, giving Arthur and Dom his blessing as they were stepping down the porch of his house, "to cut through the bushes, not to dice the heathens, I'm afraid. Locals mostly use arrows and spears, no real chance of close combat." He smiled.

"Is it really a war?" Dom wondered, shaking Coriolano's hand.

"Please understand this. Local tribes are like children. They go to war with each other today to forget the wounds and go hunting together tomorrow. Besides, you're white, you're not embroiled in their quarrels. And if the need arises, you've got Eames who speaks the language. He even speaks Ye'kuana, the tongue of Marikitare tribes. And if all is lost, you can always whip out your gun." He shook Arthur's hand.

"What about the village? Are you going to be alright here?" Dom asked.

"Everything is in the hands of the creator," said Coriolano, "but I assure you we have plenty of strong men, and this is not the first 'war' I'm witnessing here."

xxx

Eames was already waiting for them when they arrived at the riverbank. He was sitting on a boulder, smoking and giggling with a little Indian boy. He didn't move when he saw them, but his posture tensed, as if he gathered himself internally, and his eyes went cold.

He shook Dom's hand and showed two thumbs up at the clothes they wore – sneakers, a t-shirt and old jeans for Dom, cargo pants and a zipper hoodie with an undershirt for Arthur. He also squinted disapprovingly at their stuffed backpacks, but did not comment. He himself wore a camo t-shirt and cargo pants, showing his scratch-covered calves, leather sandals, and on his head – quite characteristically, a blue bandana. The gray backpack looked almost empty and weightless on his back, and the machete sheath was holstered securely to his belt. There was no gun on him, and Arthur suddenly doubted the decision of wearing his Glock to the jungle, even though Eames himself had advised that. Anyway, the 33 was hidden from view by his jacket, and he was in no hustle to remove it then and there.

With a satisfied smirk, Eames took the money from Arthur and, not bothering to count, tossed them to the boy, who caught the bundle and disappeared in the bushes.

"Here's four hundred dollars." Dom then took the bills out of his pocket. "Will it be enough to pay your partner and - for other needs?"

"More than enough," Eames said with a puff as he bent down and from under the boulder produced a small bag of weed which he stuffed into his back pocket. He then wiped the soiled hand against his hip, and took the money from Cobb. "Shall we?"

As they set off through the jungle, the church bell began to chime in the village they left behind, announcing the beginning a morning service.


	2. Chapter 2 Machete

They walked through the eternal dusk of the jungle, miles and miles of enormous trees for as far as an eye could see, some of them as wide as three men put in a line, all of them ancient, with the bark as solid and cool as a stone. If you lifted your head, you could catch an uneven, bright patch of the sky, far above the tops of the unbelievable giants. It was hard to comprehend that somewhere outside these living walls it was daytime and the sun was shining. Here everything seemed frozen, encapsulated.

The air was humid and seemed almost solid, a heavy weight pushing into Arthur's lungs, squeezing down his chest. It seemed to him that the trees around created some sort of real physical pressure. _What kind of war could possibly brew in this environment?_ Arthur thought, cleaning a damp spiderweb off his face with a sleeve. _It's hard to even breathe here, let alone fight._

However, the suffocating space they were crossing was alive. There was constant movement, shrieking, barking and screeching of animals and birds, the measured rocking of the vines, unsettled by some invisible travelers, the quiet, steady hum of a river somewhere nearby.

In the first ten minutes of the trip Arthur saw yellow-beaked toucans, red and blue macaws almost indistinguishable in the surrounding greenness. He could hear the monkeys following them in the vines above, and some other animals crushing through the underbrush before them. Then, he relaxed and stopped paying attention.

They traveled in a small procession: Eames walked first, slightly hunched forward, hands in the pockets of his pants, humming and mumbling something to himself, as a man used to taking long trips in his own company; he was followed by Cobb who trudged forward silently, determinedly, not even lifting his head to marvel at the height of the trees, not interested in the slightest in all the life squirming around. _What would it be like for me? If it was for Mom, or Dad, or Ariadne?_ Arthur asked himself, and could not find an answer to this question. Arthur closed the procession. The least he could do to create an illusion of doing his work, watching Cobb's back.

"I'd still like to know, why you aren't charging a fee for your services?" Cobb asked when they just entered the jungle.

"But I've told you already, haven't I?" Eames looked at him over his shoulder. "Your wife came to me. The day she and Mercedes left. Coriolano wanted me to take them to Ashembo. But I was fucking high. So..." He crooked an apologetic smile at Dom, and for a moment looked genuinely sorry.

"So you decided to right the wrong you hadn't caused," Cobb stated, and Arthur noticed how rigid his whole body went.

"I know how you feel, that's all," said Eames and, half-turning to them, tapped a finger against the tattoo of a crucifix on his shoulder. "I know what it's like when something happens to the ones you love and you can do nothing about it."

"What happened to this woman, Kelli?" Dom asked, wiping the sheen of sweat off his forehead.

"You mean my sister," Eames said, and Arthur was surprised to hear a smile in his voice. "She was a junkie, like myself, died in a car-crash."

Eames turned around and looked at Dom, and indeed he was smiling.

"If you ask me, it was a good death. For someone like her." He chuckled. "My mom and I, we both slaved our asses to Kels. At first, we thought we could fight it. But put motherly love on the scales against an ounce of speedball, and see what's gonna win. Thank God, she didn't have the time to go all the way down."

He quickly crossed his chest and kissed the golden crucifix hanging from his neck.

"When alive, she was a living hell," he continued after a pause, "now that she's dead, we can sort of block out everything bad and focus on what we choose to remember."

He shot Cobb a quick glance, and Arthur had the familiar feeling that they were being analyzed, probed for reactions.

It seemed Cobb sensed something too, as he steered the conversation in a different direction.

"Did your father try to help?"

"Oh, he OD'd when I was six," Eames answered, checking the time on the Chromalight display of his watch. "I suppose it just runs in the family."

He straightened up and walked faster, putting an end to the chat.

So they continued their trip in absolute silence, walking over and around logs, along trails shaded by immense bamboo growths, sometimes crossing small rivers and swamps. Their shoes were wet. Arthur felt blisters starting to form on his soles. The air was hot despite the shade and sticky damp. Every few minutes, one of them raised an irritated hand to brush off a spiderweb that clang to the face like a wet film.

Eames walked fast, seemingly unaffected by the stuffiness of the air, Cobb keeping stubbornly on his heels. Dom carried his backpack in one hand, rubbing the back of his neck and his stiff shoulders with another. Arthur saw a stain of sweat grow on the back of Dom's t-shirt, it started at the neck, and spread lower and lower as the time passed. He didn't want to check what his own undershirt might look like under the hoodie.

They reached a clearing in the rainforest where a gigantic log lay across a small, clean stream. There Eames slowed down abruptly, as if having reached his destination. He looked at his wristwatch, and nodded contentedly. He then approached a heap of giant green leaves, forming a small dome on the ground. He carefully removed the leaves and the rocks keeping them in place, revealing underneath a dead hearth with a few coals and a bundle of dry twigs on top. While Arthur and Cobb drank, washed themselves with the water from the stream and reapplied the repellent, Eames stuffed his hand into a crack in the bark and searched inside the log . He took out a metallic cooking pot and a bundle of oiled paper which contained cassava bread, cuts of smoked fish, and loose tea leaves in a beaten tin.

"I told you not to bring food," Eames said to Dom and smiled his usual smile, half mocking, half shy.

A few minutes later, water was starting to boil in the pot, hung above the hearth, and they were finishing the contents of Eames's stash and emptying their own backpacks, opening the tins of sardines Coriolano had provided them with, putting the tomato drenched fish on lumps of cassava bread and gobbling it all down, and waiting for the tea, with their flasks ready.

Arthur felt as if they had been on the road for at least a week, but he knew it was four in the afternoon. They'd left the village less than eight hours before.

At an improvised briefing by the campfire, they decided not to linger and try and cover another five miles before the sun went down. Arthur assumed they had walked no less than thirty already, and, provided they kept the same walking speed the next day, they could be reaching the borders of the Ashembo territory by the following evening or the morning after that.

They left their camp after Eames had killed the fire and covered the hearth, and put the pot and the tin back inside the log. Before leaving, he washed his face in the stream and took off the bandana, hiding it in the side pocket of the backpack. He had combed his beard and his hair was in a neat pony tail. Arthur realized, with a mild surprise, that Eames was not actually bad-looking, and despite of his bad posture and lumpy midriff, he must have been in a good shape, because he had led them for several hours straight without breaking too much sweat. But this good impression was quickly quashed because five minutes into the walk Eames lit up a joint.

At the first wisp of sweet smoke, Cobb lost the faculty of speech. He turned around and stared at Arthur, his mouth slightly open, his eyes full of dread, as if it was Arthur who decided to get intoxicated whilst on a rescue mission. Dom then sped up, overtaking their ill-suited guide; infuriated, he yelled at Eames, bashing the flippant attitude and the lack of reliability Cobb had not overseen in him. Arthur had to wedge between the two of them, because the way Eames was staring at Dom, with a cold smile – half-amused, half-irked, was only going to make the matters worse. Arthur imagined very clearly Dom pulling a gun at their guide and telling him in a crisp voice to put out the joint. So he bodily moved Cobb out of the way, and then spoke to Eames.

"Are you sure you're not going to... veer off the course under influence?"

And he knew normal people did not speak that way but he needed to keep at least some semblance of sanity, an illusion of control.

"I am sure," said Eames with emphasis on 'sure'. "I've memorized the whole bloody sector."

However, he looked apologetically at Cobb and put out the joint. The tension in Dom's shoulders eased and the angry flush faded from his cheeks. From that moment on, Arthur walked next to Cobb. Dom eventually slowed down and walked behind Arthur.

"What is it that your wife is looking for at Ashembo?" Eames asked after a few minutes. "I thought all anthropologists came and went back in 1980's."

"We're not anthropologists," Dom said, "we're chemical engineers. We're developing plant-based compounds for our project."

"Interesting," said Eames and scratched his nose. "And what kind of project would that be? D'you mind if I ask?"

"We're developing female Viagra," said Cobb without batting an eyelid.

Eames giggled at that.

"I thought they'd done that already."

"Ours will be better," Cobb replied solemnly.

They walked for another hour, Arthur was counting his steps trying to keep track of the distance they covered and keep his mind from asking questions he didn't have answers for.

"Tell us about the shaman," said Cobb after some time. "We need to know everything in this situation."

"Arasuwe," Eames began, "fifty; obnoxious; has three wives in the village and beats them all up on a regular basis; scared of men, despises women; is considered to be an extremely powerful _shapori_, which allows him to charge exorbitant prices for his work. Gladly puts up a show for the tourists. Over the past three months I personally have taken five touristic groups to see him perform his tricks. Four were American, the fifth one was French."

"And you don't like him why?" Cobb asked, stopping to catch his breath.

"There's nothing to like," Eames replied, "he is a fake."

"How do you know?" Arthur couldn't help wondering.

"Oh, I've been in the jungle for many years," Eames sighed. "I've seen things. Arasuwe doesn't know shit."

"That's very vague," Arthur stated and was about to ask Eames to be more specific with his response, but their guide suddenly froze in his steps, and then shushed them, pressing a finger against his chapped lips.

"Shut up now," he said in a quiet but oddly intelligible whisper. "Somebody's coming our way."

In silence they stared at the path, Arthur unbuckled the holster of his gun, Cobb and Eames did not move. A few seconds later, a dark figure appeared on top of the low-rising hill in front of them. It was a middle-aged Indian, wearing a pair of jeans, a leather quiver with rough-cut arrows, and a bow. He was not taller than 5'4, but his bulkiness and muscles made him look huge. Like most of the Yanomami, he had his hair cut as a tonsure of a Catholic monk. He saw them, smiled and raised a hand in a greeting. Eames copied the gesture and spoke to the man in a whining, nasal voice. The Indian laughed at that, uproariously, and shook Eames's hand, still giggling.

"He's laughing at the way I speak, bastard," Eames chuckled, and then asked the Indian in Spanish, "How was the road?"

"It was alright. I saw your friend," the man replied, and pressed his wrists to the back of his head, sticking his fingers out, shaping them into what looked like a mock crown or short antlers.  
Eames scowled at him and switched back to Yanomaman. The conversation was short, but animated. It started out as a mild argument which was quickly replaced with mutual laugh and a friendly pat on the shoulder. The Indian then turned to Arthur and Cobb who were standing by, trying to figure out what was being discussed in secret.

"I am Etewa," he said in Spanish. "I'll be taking you to the mountain."

They shook hands.

"Now tell us what that chat was all about," Dom said tightly, his muscles coiling.

"Some bad news," Eames replied, "Etewa here says somebody has spread the rumor that we are going to Ashembo to steal shapori powers. Marikitare have opened a hunt. Their warriors are on the way to Barlovento. They also sent a squad to track us down. However, Etewa says the path is still clear, and once we reach the mountain, we're out of danger."

"Who's your friend he's been talking about?" Arthur asked.

" ," Eames answered, and Etewa nodded in affirmation, repeating his gesture from before, his fingers shaping into the crown over his head.

"The American gold-miner?" Eames continued. "He leaves further up by the river. Etewa's sister, Tutemi, is married to him. So our Etewa's been on a recon trip for me since early in this morning, to make sure our venture would be a safe one. And in the jungle he met his brother-in-law, who, by coincidence, happens to be the man who saved my ass a couple of months ago. And...he's a little crazy."

At those words, Etewa burst into loud guffaws, and bent forward, imitating the walk of an old man.

"I don't understand," Dom frowned."You yourself just said you've been taking tourists to that mountain on a regular basis. What's wrong this time? Why would the tribes hunt us?"

"Not only us, remember? Marikitare are seriously pissed at the Yanomami for giving you shelter," Eames replied, chewing at his nail. "Do you have any enemies here? Because somebody's trying really hard to get you killed."

xxx

The night fell unexpectedly. It was light only moments ago, but already shadows were closing in on them. Eames built a small fire in the shade of a gigantic bamboo growth, within a few feet from a shallow stream. Etewa disappeared in the jungle and returned fifteen minutes later, bringing with him a small tapir he had hunted in the falling dark.

"You bring luck," he smiled at Arthur and Dom.

They ate the wiry, bitter-tasting meat Etewa had cut and wrapped in bamboo leaves, and cooked in the embers of the hearth, dipping the morsels into the ash to add some saltiness and improve the taste.

Eames and the Indian hung four hammocks near the hearth, using vines and lianas as ropes. Etewa's hammock was made using a narrow strip of tree bark. Arthur noticed it was barely wide enough for a person to turn on his side. Dom's hammock was hanging closest to the fire, next to him slept Arthur, followed by Eames, and finally the Indian. The night was cold, and Arthur offered Etewa a spare blanket he'd brought in his backpack, which the Yanomamo gladly accepted.

They decided to move out at dawn; that left them about seven hours of sleep, and Eames and Etewa were to serve as the lookouts during that time. They refused Arthur's offer to take on some of the hours on the grounds that Arthur and Dom were paying customers, which was only partially true.

They settled down in their swinging beds, and the silence stretched around them. Etewa rocked his hammock as a pendulum and fell asleep before the motion stopped; Dom lay quiet and still as a stone, Arthur heard him sigh, exhausted, as he fell asleep. Eames who was supposed to be on a watch showed no sign of life, his breathing quiet and even, his body a heavy, relaxed weight, straining the flower-printed fabric of his hammock.

Arthur himself was about to give up all the caring and slide into oblivion, when he heard something move on the ground below him. He froze in his hammock, and then looked down to see what it was. He saw nothing, but his sleep was ruined. As if coming to himself, he realized that the night surrounding them was moving, breathing and crying. Something was lurking in the shadows around the hearth, gleaming eyes were following them from the darkness. There was shrieking, howling and hyenic laughter very close to the place where they stopped. As the fire in the hearth began to die out, an animal roared in the bamboo growth right behind Arthur's back. It was the last straw, he was not going to lie there and just wait until something happened. He forced himself to sit up in his bed, his back ramrod straight, his nerves high-strung. He didn't know what exactly he was going to do – add some twigs to the dying hearth – probably, go and kick Eames awake – maybe...

"Arthur," Eames said quietly from his hammock, startling him even more, "quit tossing around. You're wheezing like a bear."

Arthur wanted to give some sort of an adequate reply, ask whether Eames had been awake this entire time, but he suddenly felt too tired to talk, and, besides, there was really no point answering. He lay back down, and, with surprise, watched Eames get up and hoist his hammock closer to Arthur's. Eames fed some wood to the weakening flame and climbed back up into his swinging bed. Now he was lying so close that Arthur could feel the warmth of his body through the chilly air.

"It's perfectly normal," Eames began as he settled down under the patched blanket, "to be scared on your first night in the rainforest. I remember my own first time here. I was terrified, couldn't close my eyes for a minute."

"When was that?" Arthur mumbled, feeling inexplicably tongue-tied.

"Oh, more than eight years ago." Eames answered, flicked open a lighter and lit up a joint which he then handed to Arthur. Arthur hesitated before accepting it. He took a draw and returned the joint to Eames who was staring at him, smiling. Eames's fingers, warm and calloused, lingered on Arthur's wrist, and he laughed quietly as Arthur jerked his hand back, embarrased.

"Sorry, that was unacceptable."

Arthur decided to ignore the quip, and thought that Eames, when not grimacing or trying to be obnoxious, was a beautiful man. Or maybe that was just the light from the campfire that sent the shadows running across Eames's face, making Arthur see something that really wasn't there. Meanwhile Eames got back to playing with his lighter, looking directly in front of him, lost in a thought.

"Nothing here," he said after a moment, "wants trouble with us, Arthur. We are the most dangerous predators in this jungle."

Arthur did not reply because he was suddenly sound asleep.

xxx

They were not, it appeared, the most dangerous of the predators.

It was three in the afternoon of the following day, and the forest around them began to thin down as they were approaching the territory of the mountain. The terrain became hilly, and Arthur could swear he heard the roar of falling water somewhere at a distance. The air was fresher and more ionized, announcing that the waterfalls of Ashembo were nearby. There was a cautious gleam of hope in Dom's eyes as he shot a look at Arthur on the way up a rocky hill. Eames and Etewa perked up and walked faster, talking quietly in Spanish. Eames took Dom's money out of the back pocket of his pants and handed it to their bodyguard. They were almost there, Arthur realized, Etewa would be leaving soon.

Arthur stopped and leaned against a tree, trying to pry the bottle of water out of a side pocket of his backpack, thinking about what they would find in the cave, if they found anything at all. It was then that he heard a quiet whistling sound and the bark of the tree next to his neck suddenly cracked and sent splinters of wood flying in Arthur's hair. Arthur turned around and abruptly fell to the ground, his body acting before he realized what his eyes just saw. He slid down, falling between the giant roots, flailing his hands as he went, spilling the water all around. His unzipped hoodie remained hanging in the air, the hood pinned to the tree by a rough-cut, wooden arrow that looked just like the ones Etewa carried around in his quiver.

Other members of their party were already on the ground. Eames and Etewa, gun and bow ready, took position behind a small boulder. Cobb, who appeared to be the only civilian among the four of them, was hiding behind a tree nearby. His face was white, lips thinned into a determined line, and the edge of an army knife that he'd got God knows where gleamed in his hand.

The attackers did not make them wait. In complete silence, running warriors started pouring from the top of the hill they had been climbing. So, Marikitare had been waiting for them at the border of the sacred land, by the end of the only path. A foolproof strategy; Arthur would have done the same.

They were short, bulky men, completely naked, save for the waist string tying their dicks up and the ritual feathers attached to the white wooden sticks protruding from the pierced skin around their mouths and ears. Their faces were blackened with soot, the sign of war. The warriors were massive, there was no chance of survival for any of Arthur's party in case of close combat, not even for Etewa.

If Arthur started shooting then, it would be murder, plain and simple, but it would be death for all of them if he didn't. He chanced a glance at Eames and Etewa; the two were apparently having the same thoughts, as they looked at the approaching warriors, but did not dare open fire.

One of the attackers raised his spear, aiming in the direction of Cobb, Arthur supposed, and Arthur's steady hand conveniently made a decision for him. Arthur had a perfect aim. He shot the man in the head, before Eames and Etewa managed to raise their arms. Then he shot the man that followed the ill-fated spear-launcher, and another one, and then three more. He aimed mostly at the legs, as he would not, he could not kill any more. He heard Eames and Etewa start firing shots as well. And then, a few seconds later, it was the feared cross combat, and Arthur tossed away the now useless Glock, and whipped out Coriolano's present. The machete felt light and insubstantial in his hand, like a child's toy, but when its edge collided with the short blade in the hands of the first Marikitare to accost him, the sparks that flew in the air were perfectly real.

Etewa and Eames were fighting back to back, using their machetes to fend off the attackers. Clearly outnumbered, they both looked scared. The Marikitare slowly encircled them, grinning silently, their faces soot-covered masks, their teeth – sharpened, triangular fangs. Arthur neutralized his attacker with a cut into left upper arm, not serious enough to kill, but painful enough to fend the offense. From the corner of an eye, he saw a tall, massive Indian lunge at Eames. The warrior's knife cut through the fabric of Eames's t-shirt at the same time as Eames's machete cut through the warrior's skull with a thickening cracking sound. The camo on Eames's stomach quickly turned bright red. The Indian roared, grabbing the blade with his bare hands, blood running over his fingers, and swung back, pulling the machete out of Eames's hand. The Marikitare stumbled backwards, tripping over a giant root, and sat heavily on the mossy ground, mortally wounded. Eames whipped out the SwissChamp, ready for the next assault. As if in a nightmare, Arthur saw the warriors closing in on the guides, another Indian advancing at Eames with a predatory smile.

Arthur remembered the stories of cannibalism in Amazonian tribes he'd read in the National Geographic as a child. There was no way he was going to end up as somebody's dinner, neither were Eames and Etewa. Forgotten by the warriors, he crawled to the spot where he'd dropped his gun. He used the last three rounds to take out the Marikitare attacking Eames and then, the one who was trying to strangle Etewa. The gunshots caused a short-lived panic among the Indians. Two warriors left the group and ran towards Arthur who'd taken up position behind a tree, his machete ready, considering his odds. Eames and Etewa were left two against three, but there was nothing Arthur could do to help them at that point.

The combat was fierce and short, ending as abruptly as it had began, with the Marikitare retreating unexpectedly and disappearing into the forest as if by a signal. A few seconds later one would have never guessed blood had spilled on those rocks, if it hadn't been for the several dead bodies left on the ground.

Arthur saw 'his' spear-launcher, two Marikitare with Etewa's arrows sticking out of their necks, and the knife-bearing Indian, lying on his back in a puddle, Eames's machete sitting in the crack that split his skull in two. Eames was standing above the dead body, his chin propped up against the back of his hand, obviously contemplating the possible ways of extracting his weapon from the corpse's head. Eames's face and neck were splashed with human blood and crushed bone, and the chest of his top bore a bloodied cut, blood was seeping down from it on his stomach and pants. A nervous jitter was running through Eames's frame in violent waves, but he seemed unaware of the fact, the expression on his face pensive, almost absent.

Once Arthur fell in the action mode, he usually felt calm, almost detached from the fighting, his emotions going silent, letting his brain and body do the necessary work. He would get scared later, in the comfort of his home. He would be terrified and probably shit himself at the danger he'd escaped, and get filthy drunk in an attempt to erase the memory. It would all happen after, but for now he had no time to mull over the risk. He had to fight. It was a simple survival mechanism, and Arthur always felt compassionate towards people who lacked one.

That was why he pulled Eames by the upper arm and led him away from the corpse. Arthur made him sit down on the boulder and gave him a gourd with water to wash his face. Eames blinked at him, not recognizing, then looked at the gourd, and suddenly his face fell back in place. "Oh," he said, taking the gourd from Arthur's hand. And then, "Oh," as he ran his fingers over the blood-weeping cut on his chest.

Arthur went to fetch his backpack from under the tree where it was still laying in a gap between the mossy roots. He stopped for a minute to unpin his hoodie and put his Glock back into the holster. Eames was waiting for him on the boulder, clutching at the gourd as it were a lifebuoy. Arthur made him take off his top and examined the wound, which turned out to be nothing but a skin-deep scratch that nonetheless was bleeding profusely and needed to be closed. Arthur took his first aid kit out of the backpack and began mending Eames's chest. As he was working, he could not fight the feeling that he was doing something wrong, but no matter how hard he focused, he could not pin down what was off. When Eames, breathing heavily and squinting at Arthur's needlework, was finally sewn up, bandaged and dressed into Arthur's spare t-shirt which was too tight for him in the shoulders, Arthur collected the waste and discarded it in one of Eames's inescapable Ziplocs.

He then looked around and saw Etewa milling about, grabbing the dead bodies by their legs and arranging them in a line in the shade of the boulder Eames was perched upon. There was no sight of the wounded, and Arthur wondered when and how they might have left the site.

And then he wondered why he did not see Cobb anywhere around.


	3. Chapter 3 Guitar, Flute and String

The realization hit him hard enough to knock the ground from under his feet.

His heart went cold. He had to fight a wave of nausea that made the content of his stomach rise up his throat. He stood there, clutching the plastic bag with bloodied bandages in his hands, unable to move, unable to say a word.

Arthur was a bit dense. He had often been told that. Dead-above-the-ears. He was smart, cool-headed, and dumb. A highly-organized idiot – that was Arthur.

He dropped the bag, and went straight to the spot where he'd last seen Dom. On the ground behind the giant tree lay a dead Marikitare, Cobb's army knife protruding from the spot where his neck met the shoulder. There was no other sign of Dom. Arthur peered down and saw a barely visible trail of blood leading to the disturbed underbrush south of the hill.

He was startled by the weight of Eames's hand on his shoulder, warm and heavy.

"We will track them down and bring him back," Eames said, completely in control. He had stopped shaking and sounded calm as a stone. Or stoned. Arthur couldn't decide which was more true.

"If he's still alive," he replied, and he absolutely did not care about the tears that were blurring his vision.

He thought about the old, boring, impractical Dom who cracked fantastic, dry jokes and treated Arthur as family, even though Arthur himself had never truly accepted and always discouraged such treatment. Dom, who had an irrational fear of guns and only held a knife in his hand when he was going to chop salad, had disappeared, leaving behind a dead body.

"They took him to the village," Etewa stated in Spanish, appearing by their side. "They will not kill him, but you will now need money." And he rubbed three fingers together in front of Arthur's nose to illustrate his words.

xxx

The road to the village took them four hours. Eames, who'd been hurt, couldn't move fast enough, neither could Etewa, who limped by, having covered his bloodied knee with a bandage made of leaves. Arthur was ready to simply run after the kidnappers, letting the guides follow at their own pace, but he quickly came to realize that no matter how good a soldier he was, he did not possess enough tracking skills to pursue a group of Indians through the jungle by himself. Thus, he put a new 9Round into his Glock, holstered the machete that had saved his life to the belt of his pants, and willed himself to calm down and exercise some patience, moving forward at the speed set by his friends.

They didn't speak, but Arthur felt the way his guides treated him change. Etewa who'd been naturally friendly and respectful, patted him on the shoulder and said in Spanish, "Good eye." Arthur nodded in response and gave a mental sigh. As for Eames, he simply stopped talking. The fact that he stopped smiling and bantering could easily be attributed to the post-traumatic stress and exhaustion, but Arthur, no matter how hard he tried, could not place the way Eames started looking at him.

Eames had been – 'appreciative' would be the right word - from the very beginning. He'd always been friendly, one would say protective and a bit patronizing which surprisingly did not rub Arthur the wrong way as much as he'd have expected. Arthur clearly remembered the moment Eames had walked out of the hut, pulling up his tacky briefs and scanning them with his impossible sly eyes, appallingly dismissing him as a useless twink, and at the same time accepting him as such. Over the course of their journey Eames had regarded him with amusement and a strange fondness, as if Arthur was a child, not too clever, but still adorable.

The attack changed it all. Eames continued being friendly, but he avoided looking Arthur in the eyes. He began _watching_ Arthur instead, analyzing again, making Arthur feel like a threat, an enemy in the camp. And _this_ was making Arthur really angry. Most of all, Arthur hated being mistrusted, doubted in his competence. He felt irrational spite seer inside him every time he caught Eames staring. However, there was no time to really dwell upon the changes. They had to move fast.

It was getting dark when they saw the thatched roofs of the village huts. Arthur was surprised to see that a Marikitare settlement looked almost no different from Barlovento, save for the missing church and hospital building. Eames and Etewa had a quick briefing in Spanish on possible course of actions, which for once did not exclude Arthur. The plan was simple: Etewa, who'd visited the village before, knew in which hut the prisoners were usually kept. They would neutralize the sentries and snatch Cobb, trying to make as little noise as possible. Then they would run. However simple, the plan worked. Up to a point.

Etewa used a big pebble to knock out the sentry securing the perimeter near the hut. The place resembled a barn and actually had walls made of logs in contrast to all other buildings of the settlement. They crawled to the back wall of the structure, and Etewa peered inside through a small uncovered window. He then said something to Eames and the latter beckoned to Arthur to approach the hut.

The darkness within the barn was so profound that Arthur had to take out his flashlight to be able to see anything. What he saw was an empty, bare-walled rectangle of a room, and on the ground in the corner - a sitting silhouette covered with a piece of rag, only the noses of Cobb's Nikes visible from under the cover. Arthur called him, but Dom did not respond, did not even move. Arthur reckoned he was probably unconscious or asleep. They had to go inside.

Etewa repeated his trick with the pebble on the only warrior guarding the entrance of the hut. The night around them was perfectly dark and still, nothing but uneven flashes of light from the bonfire in the center of the village lighting up the sky from time to time. Arthur and Eames entered the hut, leaving Etewa on the lookout.

Cobb was unconscious, there was a bloodied bruise on his left temple, but his breathing was steady. Arthur gave him a slap and splashed some water from the small flask which Eames pushed into his hands on Dom's face. Dom moaned and opened his eyes, he looked nauseous. Arthur and Eames picked him off the floor and led him to the doorway, supporting his quivering body on both sides. This was when the plan misfired.

Outside the hut they froze in their steps as they saw their lookout, sitting on the ground with his chin propped philosophically against his hand. Around him, closing the hut in a perfect semi-circle stood six Marikitare warriors, their bows raised and aiming at the entrance.

"Shit," said Eames, "shit, fuck and tits."

Etewa shrugged and rolled his eyes at that.

The four of them were stripped of their weapons and escorted to the chief's shabono, which stood in the center of the village. It took them about two minutes to get there. To Arthur, however, this short walk seemed to last an hour. The dark streets of the village were suddenly filled with a crowd. Women and men, children and the old, standing in complete silence, watching them with avid, curious eyes. To Arthur's relief, nobody made an attempt to reach out and touch the captives, there was no hooting or laughter he had anticipated. The walk was largely uneventful, and neither Eames nor Etewa seemed particularly scared by the turn of events.

They entered the chief's home and were led to the back of a long, candle lit room; as they walked they had to maneuver in order not to step on lacquered pots and enormous decorative shells scattered carelessly all around the floor. Their arrival was greeted with a high-pitched, uneven tune, played on some kind of a woodwind instrument, its fragments twirling in the dim light like falling leaves.

Behind a big hearth seething in the middle of the room they saw a robust, middle-aged man, sitting on a bamboo mat. As they approached, the Indian put down a flute that was made from what looked like a deer tibia and ended in an actual cloven hoof, sharpened and decorated with white feathers, and smiled a big, gentle smile. He gestured, inviting them to sit down and said in very clear, well-structured Spanish, addressing Eames.

"Hello, white thief! I wait for you, and here you are."

"Well, that's a bit harsh, coming from a liar and a murderer, don't you think?" Eames answered with a matching smile and leaned over to shake the chief's hand. He spoke English, and Arthur realized that the Marikitare understood everything he said.

"I am Iramowawe, the chief of all the south-western tribes," said the Indian, when Eames and Arthur, with Dom propped at his side, were seated around the hearth, facing him. Etewa was left standing in the back, flanked by the guards, and this reminded Arthur that they were not guests in this village, no matter how friendly their captor might have looked.

"So I see you've come for your friend," Iramowawe said and brought the flute to his lips, sending into the air a cascade of jagged, panicked notes.

"Yes, we have," Eames answered in English and cringed at the sound. "We would really appreciate your kindness, if you just kindly let us all go right now, because we are very, very short of time. And you know what I mean."

"I'll let you go, on one condition," Iramowawe smiled. "You must promise me that you won't harm my father, no matter what happens."

"I promise you that," Eames said, pressing his right hand to his chest, above the heart.

"Also, promise me not to steal my father's secrets," Iramowawe continued without paying much attention to Eames's words. "You cannot take anything from the cave, but the women you're after. Not even here." And he tapped himself on the forehead with an index finger.

"I promise you that," Eames repeated in earnest, and Arthur, however high-strung and anxious he was, could not help feeling a strange amusement at the comical expression of exaggerated loyalty on Eames's face.

"Now, all that said, I still can't let you go." Iramowawe cocked his head to the side, and glanced over at Arthur and Cobb. The look in his eyes gave Arthur chills. _Everything is going to be okay_, he told himself, and he tried to suppress the fear that was about to overcome him. "Unless," the chief continued with a smile, "you pay for what is mine."

"I've got nothing that's yours," Eames replied, and the stutter that Arthur overheard as the guide spoke almost made him jump.

"What is he talking about?" he asked Eames, and he couldn't be bothered by the chief who looked up and listened to him with rapt attention.

"My people," Iramowawe answered in place of Eames, "used to live many miles up the River some years ago. We'd been closer to the white cities than the Yanomamo that gave you shelter. When the racionales started coming in and corrupting the people of the forest, we knew better than to listen to their promises. We pulled up stakes and moved deeper into the jungle. We bought us some time, that's why our children are still pure and our men know nothing of the alcohol that comes with the white. However, we were unable to seclude ourselves entirely. The white are greedy, it's not only gold and stones that they're coming for, those are the secrets, the truths our fathers have passed to us that they're trying to steal."

"What is it that Eames stole from you?" Arthur asked, incredulous.

"He and his friend, and his Yanomamo lapdog," Iramowawe said and his hand flew to his temple and moved in a circle above the forehead,"they stole a battle."

"A battle?" Arthur echoed and looked at Eames who snorted and shook his head.

"What do you want in return for your loss?" Eames said in Spanish. He shoved a hand into his bottomless pocket and fished out a neat roll of bills Arthur hadn't been acquainted with, which he placed on the floor in front of the chief.

"Not your blood money," Iramowawe sighed. "There's not enough money in the world to account for what you took. I have a different idea. Play dice with me. If you win, you and your friends can go. If you lose, you'll have to stay."

"I'll stay and then what? Is it some kind of punishment that I don't understand?" Eames huffed out, seemingly unaffected by the prospect of spending the rest of his life in the Indian village.

"You'll stay and dream with me." Iramowawe pursed his lips around the mouth end of the flute and the sounds of a perfect ii-V7-I progression in C filled the room.

Eames stared at the chief, his eyebrows raised and his mouth slightly open in an amused smile. "And what are we going to dream about, may I ask? Oh, do not bother, I'm afraid to hear the answer."

"Of course, you don't have to do that." Iramowawe replied, raising his hands in a gesture of defeat. "I'll gladly accept your dark-eyed friend as a retribution for the wrong you have caused." And he smiled at Arthur who shivered as the chief's almond-cut teeth gleamed in the dark.

Eames's eyes darted between Iramowawe and Arthur, and he said rapidly, "No, no. I'll stay. He's got nothing to do with it."

"Doesn't he?" Iramowawe questioned and winked. "But I accept your offer. If you win, you can take your Indian dog and white friends and get out. My men will not follow you. If you lose, you'll stay for as long as I deem reasonable, and we shall dream."

"Deal," Eames called out and clapped his hands. "Bring on the sticks."

The dice were brought in by a naked little girl on whose head Arthur saw a strange furry hat with a long tail, curled around the girls ear. The girl smiled mischievously as she bypassed Arthur and Cobb, and her furry hat suddenly shrieked and glared at them with red, glowing eyes. _A pet monkey_, Arthur marveled,_ living on the head of its owner_.

The dice were six small shiny pebbles, dark brown on one side and white on another, lying on a flat clay plate; there was also a leather bag containing a bundle of white wooden sticks of different size, one of them crooked.

Iramowawe divided the sticks into three piles according to the shape and situated them on the floor next to the clay bowl. As for the crooked one, he separated it from the rest of them, placing it right in the middle between himself and his opponent. Then, he pushed the plate to Eames with a lazy smile.

"Guest gets the first draw," he said and cocked his head.

Arthur grasped the essence of the game very quickly. Each player rolled the dice, and if he got five dice alike he was awarded three of the straight sticks which formed the biggest of piles. If a second five alike was thrown, the player received nine round sticks from a smaller pile. If a player threw three consecutive five alike rolls he was awarded a flat stick which were the smallest number, and, Arthur supposed, were worth the most. When somebody was lucky enough to roll six alike, he received one flat stick and he also got to roll again. If a second consecutive six alike was rolled, then the player was awarded two flat sticks. In case of a third consecutive six alike the player received three flat sticks. And so on and so forth until all of the counters were used up. The last stick that remained on the mat between the players was the "Crooked Stick". The winner of that last piece was awarded two sticks from the pile of the opponent and another draw. At that point the game was to enter the final phase where the players would win sticks from one another and the luckier one would eventually bankrupt the opponent.

The whole set up, the dependency on something as elusive and unpredictable as luck was enough to make Arthur uncomfortable. The game of chance, however, didn't seem to bother Eames. He started off pretty well on the first draw and continued with a small but growing advantage throughout the first phase. The result of the game along with their fate, Arthur figured, depended largely on who would win the crooked counter.

The players were quiet. The minutes floated by, slowly turning into hours. Arthur was pretty sure he could feel the first morning light crawling up the sky outside the thatched walls. Dom had fallen asleep, snoring lightly by his side. As the time passed, the guards and Etewa moved gradually closer and closer to the players, raptly following the course of the game, mesmerized by the roll of the dice. One of them moved over, standing to the right of Dom, and leaving Etewa's right flank open.

The game ended abruptly as Eames rolled the dice for the last time and they fell six on the white side. He shrugged and lifted the crooked stick off the ground, raising it above his head for everyone to see, smiling a quiet, childish smile. Simultaneously, Iramowawe closed his eyes and bared his teeth in a low guttural whine, his body shook, and his fists knocked the ground, raising a small cloud of dust into the air.

The next few seconds were probably the longest in Arthur's memory. First, Dom who had been asleep for quite a while, suddenly woke up and kicked the distracted guard in the shins, making him fall down on the dusty floor where Arthur had been waiting for him; second, Etewa punched the remaining guard in the nose, and third being Eames grabbing the clay plate and using it to hit Iramowawe in the face.

_Fuck_, Arthur thought as he wrestled the warrior on the ground, _this is getting really annoying_.

The coup was lightning fast. In a matter of minutes the great chief and the two warriors were bound and gagged, laid face down on the floor. Arthur helped Cobb who'd been sitting on the ground looking dizzy, up to his feet.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, feeling like a complete idiot, because of course Cobb had been hurt.

"Can you walk?" Eames demanded. He was rummaging through a small wooden chest which stood on a low postament behind Iramowawe's mat. Eames groped inside, and with a content smile took out his SW and the machete which he pressed to his lips. He then took out the sheath containing Arthur's Gerber and threw it at its owner not really bothering to look if Arthur caught it.

"Where's my gun?" Arthur looked into the chest over Eames's shoulder. The box was full of seemingly discarded weapons – guns, knives, empty magazines, old and new, rusty and recently polished. However, Arthur's Glock was not among them. Arthur pushed Eames aside and raked through the contents of the chest once again to no result. Eames was standing nearby, scratching his head.

"We have to go now," Etewa said suddenly from where he was standing near the back entrance of the hut. "It's getting light. The guards will be changing soon."

They grabbed Dom and were about to walk out into the jungle that began right outside the back door, when something shrieked in the room behind them. Experiencing some sick deja-vu, Arthur and Eames both turned their heads and froze.

The great chief whom they'd left lying on the ground, had crawled up to the trunk. He was on his back, with his feet pressed firmly against the floor and his body arched up into the air, the weight of it switched to his shoulders. His hands bound behind his back were holding an old knife from the chest, which he had pushed between the curls of rope that held his wrists together. He was pushing it through the fiber of the string in short, frantic moves, the tendons on his neck standing out, and his teeth chewing at the piece of rope tied around his head as a gag. The four of them, stunned, looked at the ragged edge of the blade cutting through the thick string. At some point it brushed against the meat of Iramowawe's palm, and blood, black as tree sap, started seeping onto the dust. The chief ignored the pain, doubling his efforts.

_What an idiot_, Arthur thought, almost beside himself, _couldn't have waited for us to leave first_.

Then, he caught some movement in the dark and realized the Marikitare was not that stupid after all. Behind the weak smoke rising from the hearth he saw Iramowawe's daughter, pet monkey still perched on top of her head. The girl was scowling, focused on a small dark object in her hands.

Arthur peered closer and realized she was fiddling with the Glock.

_No safety_, ran through Arthur's head.

"She won't be able to," Eames mumbled somewhere close, as if talking to himself.

Etewa and Eames both yelled at the chief's daughter in Ye'kuana; Arthur dropped Cobb's arm and charged at the girl as he was _not_ going to wait and see whether the child was actually strong enough to pull the trigger on his own gun; Iramowawe succeeded in cutting the rope, and the girl screamed and threw the gun at rapidly approaching Arthur, aiming at his head. Arthur jumped forward and would have caught the gun with no difficulty, if it wasn't for the girl's father. Iramowawe, whose ankles were still bound together, lunged under Arthur's feet, and Arthur landed flat on his stomach, a few inches away from the wailing child. The gun fell somewhere behind his back. And fired a shot.

A metal encrusted wooden shield on the opposite wall produced a clear 'ding' sound with a fan of sparks flying into the air, and Arthur suddenly felt like a horse kicked him in the left upper arm.

_Fuck-_, he thought, but he did not have time to elaborate, as Iramowawe, heavy as a brick house, was on Arthur's back, and the chief's hands, hard and unyielding as a pair of steel tongs, squeezed his jaw and started to turn it.

Arthur pawed blindly through the dust with his right hand, grabbed something that felt like a clay bowl and smashed it against the attacker's head. Iramowawe grunted above him, but his grip did not weaken. Pain blurred Arthur's vision and he heard a low, angry growl which he recognized as his own voice. And suddenly the agony stopped. Something splashed over the back of Arthur's neck and the weight of the chief's body was lifted from him.

Arthur sat up, looking around dizzily and rubbing at his jaw, trying to assure himself that his head was still in place. Eames stood above him, clenching his fists nervously. On the floor next to him Iramowawe lay, gurgling and bleeding through a hole in his throat, in which the deer bone flute was stuck, as it seemed, for good, its sharpened hoof having cut the flesh of the chief's neck as the best of army knives. Iramowawe's fingers were scraping at the polished bone, too weak to remove it.

"We have to go," Eames said, staring somewhere behind Arthur. His words were coming out a bit slurred, as if he were having difficulty moving his tongue.

_He is not a murderer_, Arthur thought, _not at all_.

xxx

They found their bags where they'd left them before entering the village, on the bottom of a thick bamboo growth behind the barn.

About an hour into the forest Eames made them stop.

"Right," he said, looking worriedly at Arthur's left arm, "we're splitting."

Arthur had bandaged the wound with what he'd had left in his first aid kit, but the blood started soaking through in less than half an hour. His friends had been giving him looks ever since.

"You," Eames pointed at Dom, "will go with Etewa to the mountain. Arthur and myself, we will go visit an old friend on the River. He'll take a look at Arthur's arm. We'll cut through the mountains and meet you at the foot tomorrow evening."

"Absolutely," Dom nodded with relief. He looked scary, his eyes sunken, the bruise on his temple reaching the color of ink. "We'll be alright. You need medical assistance. Don't argue with me." He placed a hand on Arthur's healthy shoulder and squeezed lightly. "Go with Eames, and we'll meet you at Ashembo tomorrow."

Arthur was not going to argue.

Dom and Etewa left, carrying with them Arthur's Glock and the last of 9Rounds.

Eames said the walk to the gold miner's house, and this was where they were headed, would take them three to four hours, depending on how fast Arthur was able to walk. It seemed to Arthur to last longer than that. At the end he trudged on, supported by Eames, the pain searing through his arm at every step.

"Why did you kill him?" Arthur asked as they reached the riverbank and made a stop to drink.

Eames glared at him, suddenly defensive.

"He was going to break your neck. What, are you sorry?"

"No, of course not." Arthur shrugged and winced at the pain. "I just-, you could've knocked him out. No need to kill."

Eames sighed and cracked his knuckles, looking at the whitewashed walls of a house, gleaming on top of the tall rock behind the sparsely growing trees. They were almost there.

"Arthur, I knew him, alright? Since Colombia. He and I used to work together for the same employer. Pissed as he was, he would have followed us to Ashembo, believe me. He had western mentality. He would find us and kill us, sacred land or not. You can't be possibly buying the tribal rubbish he was trying to sell you. All that shapori business meant nothing to him."

"Who did you work for?" Arthur asked, anticipating the kind of answer he would receive.

"Los Rastrojos," Eames answered simply.

"How did you two manage to get away?" Arthur wondered, processing the new information.

"He faked his own death a couple of years ago. I was really fucking surprised when I first saw him here."

"What about you?"

"Last November I was expediting a shipment to Panama. We were ambushed by a rivaling military group near the border. Two other guides were killed, the cargo was lost. I was left unscathed, so I fucking took off. That was the last straw, really. The pay had been good, but I couldn't do it anymore. Been paranoid as hell. Slept with my gun in hand. Always."

"Aren't you afraid they'll come for you?"

"Oh," Eames chuckled, "I don't think so. They've got more urgent problems to worry about now."

"Like?"

"Interpol. They're about to get decapitated," Eames said with a content smile. "That, and Los Urabenos."

"It must have been a long walk – from Panamanian border to Venezuela." Arthur frowned.

"I've got my ways," Eames replied, taking off his bandana and using it to wipe his sweat-covered face.

He tied the disgraced piece of fabric around his neck and held his hand to Arthur. They set off for the last leg of the journey.


	4. Chapter 4 Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?

Mr. Garth's house looked more like a fort. It stood on a ledge of a cliff, hanging high above the River. A narrow path ran across the unconquerable rocky terrain and ended at a small gate in a barb-wired metallic fence. At the gates, Eames put Arthur on the ground and actually buzzed an intercom, a fact Arthur would have found hilarious, if he hadn't been so jaded by that time. Something screeched above their heads, and he realized they were being watched by a CCTV. A few seconds later the gate opened, letting them in.

Mr. Garth was a gaunt, stern-looking old man, no less than 6'2 tall. He wore a Grateful Dead t-shirt and a pair of jeans, and moved with ease and precision of a youth. Arthur remembered vaguely being put on a table in a room with white walls which looked like a cross between a kitchen and an exam room. He remembered the texture of wood underneath his back, the cold of Mr. Garth's fingers on his shoulder, the prick of a needle, and the sunlight gleaming on the bald spot on top of the gold miner's head. And the voices, Eames's – concerned and tired, and Mr. Garth's – cold and accusatory. Then the drug kicked in – and thank God for the opiates.

Arthur woke up again to the sound of voices, this time clear and very close.

"When do you think you'll be back?" Mr. Garth asked somewhere near, sounding surprisingly fond, and Arthur fought the urge to open his eyes and look around. Arthur might not have been the one endowed with strong intuition, but at that very moment it seemed logical to lie quietly and listen.

"By Friday – ," Eames began, and suddenly yelped, "_oh, oh, easy, easy, Jesus! _"

"Shouldn't have allowed yourself to get diced like that," Mr. Garth answered with a huff, "and then gotten into a fight without thinking of all the stitches. You've ruined some very good needlework. Now grit your teeth and endure while the good ole Jerry tries to close you up all over again. Who did the stitching? The fairy over there?"

"Yeah, him," Eames laughed and yelped again. "Jesus, Garth, have mercy! Can I at least have some Vicodin? Please?"

"Nope," was the answer, "not for you, sweetheart."

A few minutes ran past, punctuated by Eames's heavy breathing and occasional grunts.

"By Friday, you say?" the gold miner resumed the conversation. Arthur heard the clang of metal and figured something had been thrown on a medical tray, probably the used suture scissors. "Dave, I know you're a nutcase, but even you can't possibly hope to leave tomorrow."

"There's a man waiting for us by the mountain. His wife's in Ashembo. We have to go retrieve her."

"He'll have to wait. Who's with him? Etewa, I suppose? Then, he'll be alright. One more night won't change anything. The woman's already there, isn't she?"

"Yeah, but..."

"No but. This isn't a joke. Your friend needs rest. You can leave tomorrow, if you please. You're a hopeless case. But I won't let you drag the boy with you. Let him be."

"Fuck," Eames sighed, and Arthur heard him move, jump heavily onto the floor. "Why d'you have to make everything so bloody difficult?"

"It's you who likes to simplify things, pumpkin. I'm merely the voice of your conscience." Mr. Garth laughed and Arthur heard a chair being moved. "Is your friend done in Caracas?"

"I don't know," Eames said, apparently moving around the room, "haven't heard from him for days. Fuck, I just want to get out of here. _God _."

"Wait," Mr. Barth said, "the boy's awake." Arthur felt a heavy, hard palm cover his forehead.

"How are you feeling?" Mr. Garth asked above him. Arthur opened his eyes.

He was still lying on the dining table in Garth's kitchen. His neck and back felt incredibly stiff and the now familiar dull pain was running through his shoulder at every breath. The gold miner stared at him, dead serious, and Arthur thought, _He is bald, strange_.

Arthur sat up, swinging his legs off the table and feeling motion sickness as he did it. He looked around the room. There were two chairs standing by the open window, which was letting in the last evening light before the dark. On a small kitchen cart between the chairs Arthur saw a surgical kit, a tin tray with two pairs of bloodied scissors in it, and an open bag of dissolvable sutures. A plastic bag on the floor contained the bloodied bandages.

Eames, wearing an old wifebeater over the freshly-bandaged chest, was standing by the stove. He poured some water from the kettle into a mug and gave Arthur a quick look, his face schooled into the usual careless expression. _Suspicious_, Arthur thought, _he is suspicious of me_.

"Water," Arthur said to Mr. Garth, and realized it was incredibly difficult to speak. His throat was dry as a desert, a wave of nausea covered him as he moved his head. He was promptly given a glass of water and helped into the chair by his severe host.

The old man offered him food, but all Arthur could think about was sleep. He vaguely remembered being led through a dark corridor into a small room with brightly colored shutters on an askew window. He fell asleep on simple white sheets, on a queen-size bed, under a mosquito net that was swaying in the breeze like a dream catcher.

It was dark outside when Jerry woke him up and escorted him to the shower where Arthur washed himself however he was able to, without letting the freezing water go over the bandaged area. They had dinner with the Garths: Jerry, Tutemi, a Yanomamo woman of about thirty, who was said to be Etewa's sister and regarded them with an absent-minded, almost vacant expression, and Jerry Jr, a boy of seventeen, as tall as Mr. Garth, his massive, dough-like body dressed in incongruous western clothes. It was nine in the evening when they sat down to table. They ate fish and mashed potatoes, cooked by Mrs. Garth and served with the usual ash sauce to improve the taste.

The meal was silent. There was no small talk to maintain, no questions to ask. Eames was sitting on Arthur's right, quiet and avoiding Arthur's eyes at best he could. His hair was wet, he smelled of shampoo and aftershave, though his beard was still in place. Arthur glanced over Eames's pale face, the dark circles under his eyes, over his hair, neatly combed on one side and his beard, with drops of water still gleaming here and there. He suddenly had a feeling that Eames was someone he'd seen a long time before that. _He looks like a movie character_, Arthur thought,_someone from when we were kids. He's part R.J. MacReady, part Kevin Flynn_.

When Jerry Jr. and Mrs. Garth cleared the table and retired for the night, the gold miner invited them to a small veranda where Jerry lit up a pipe and Eames smoked a joint.

"For how long have you lived here?" Arthur asked.

"Trust me, you weren't born yet, when I first set my foot on this land," the gold miner answered, but his words contained no real bite.

"I'm twenty-seven," Arthur said, unfazed.

"Thirty-two years," Mr. Garth replied, taking a draw from the pipe, "I've given thirty-two years of my life to this land. That's older than Davey here."

"Never thought of going back to the world?" Arthur had to suppress an involuntary shudder at the mere thought of spending any extended period of time in the rainforest, deprived of basic amenities.

"What for? To buy another piece of junk that is an American car, or a cardboard box that we call a house? To live for a career and die in misery?" Mr. Garth laughed. "I'm too old for that, I've been away too long. Let the young and hungry run the rat race." He gestured at Eames, who was sitting on the wooden floor, looking through the maps that he'd taken out of his backpack.

"Oh," Eames blinked at them, lifting his head from his reading, "am I being told off for something? I didn't quite catch that."

"I'm just explaining to Arthur that in the crazy race that is our life, old tins like myself should clear the way for the young sharks like you, darling." The corners of Jerry's eyes crinkled with laughter.

"Oh, still a hopeless romantic, aren't you Jerry?" Eames mumbled, stuffing the maps back into the backpack. "Well, I'm going to nod off, if you don't mind. It's been a rather exhausting day."

He left, giving a mock salute to Mr. Garth as he went.

"Don't you find this whole environment, I don't mean just the jungle and the Indians, but - the whole corrupt system too dangerous to raise a family?" Arthur wondered after a minute.

"No," Jerry frowned, "I don't. It's no worse than the US, or any other western country, for that matter. My son doesn't depend on anybody. Neither does my wife. There's always the jungle, there will always be. When I'm dead they'll be able to take care of themselves, no law or system will tell them what to do, where to go, what to say. They're free. That condition is more important than the availability of shower gel, not that we don't have any."

They spent some time in complete silence, Mr. Garth puffing his pipe, Arthur watching the play of moths around a the ceiling lamp above their heads. It was past eleven already, and the effect of painkillers started wearing out.

"Arthur," Mr. Garth began, "how well do you know your companion?"

"Cobb?" Arthur asked, surprised.

"Yes, him. And his wife."

"Three years," Arthur answered, trying to figure out where it all was going.

"What are you – his PA? His bodyguard?"

"More like the latter. What about it?"

"D'you have complete trust in them?"

"The Cobbs? Yeah, I guess. Why?"

"You make a good impression – resourceful, resolute, loyal. I wouldn't want you end up dead, because you trusted the wrong people."

Arthur felt the heat rise up his cheeks. The strange, reclusive old man, what could he possibly know about Mal or Dom, or Arthur?

"I don't see how any of it is of your concern. I know the Cobbs well enough to trust them." As he spoke he felt the blood pulsing through his upper arm, hot, piercing shots.

"The jungle is full of rumors. They have it your friends are looking for something very..." Mr. Garth snapped his fingers, in search of a suitable word, "inconvenient to too many. Don't you have a feeling that you, personally, are somehow being blindsided here?"

"No, I don't," Arthur answered simply, "and even if some information had been withheld, I'm sure it's for security purposes. Nothing else."

He tried to keep his expression blank, and his voice sound casual, but the wound suddenly became unbearably sensitive, and the pain that was probably neurological at that point, almost made him grit his teeth.

"Talk to your friend, Mr. Cobb." The gold miner shook his head. "He's got to be honest with you."

xxx

Arthur moved unsteadily through the dark hallway leading to the guest bedroom, Mr. Garth's words echoing in his mind. He needed rest, he would think over the situation tomorrow.

The bedroom was in half-darkness, lit by a small candle on a clay tray on the bedside table. It was giving off the last of its dying light. Somehow Arthur wasn't surprised to find Eames fast asleep on the far side of the bed. The half that Arthur had occupied was waiting for him intact, his pillow still bunched up and the blanket in a twist as Arthur had left it. Eames was stripped down to black briefs, his clothing in a heap on the floor. He slept on his stomach, snoring lightly, head turned to the opened window, away from Arthur.

Arthur sat heavily on the mattress, his leg wound that hadn't reminded about itself for many months suddenly making itself known by phantom pain. He carefully got rid of his clothes and rolled in the blanket, hoping to fall asleep once again before the effects of morphine wore out completely. Unsettled, he tossed around, trying to better position his arm and leg, and, getting desperate, accidentally elbowed Eames who groaned and moved further to the side. _Everything's going to be okay_, Arthur thought, _it should be_. He willed himself to sleep.

_Arthur dreams that night._

_Through his sleep he can hear the buzzing of mosquitoes behind the net, the rustle of wind in the trees outside. His sleep is worn thin, almost transparent. He squeezes his eyes shut, grabbing the edges of the dream fragments, trying to pull them on top of himself, like blankets._

_First, he dreams about the white walls of an ancient fortress and red dust. This is a bastard of a memory that sneaks upon him whenever he's sick or stressed and his defenses are down. In this dream Arthur is twenty. His team has taken position in the shade of a thousand-year-old fortification, towering above the old Afghan city. They're lying flat on their stomachs, ready for the next strike. Arthur flips his radio on._

_"Thunder, Ranger," Arthur in the dream says to the pilot of one of the jets that had been circling the area since morning. "The coordinates are: north 3639984, east 06658945, elevation 1,229 feet."_

_In reality Arthur has long forgotten the sequence of digits that marked the location of the two-story building on the southeast of the fort grounds, in which about three hundred desperate men were getting ready to launch their last attack against the Alliance forces. Arthur in the dream, however, fires them out without as much as making a pause to catch his breath._

_"Good. Copy," replies the voice in the handset. "Be advised," it continues after a pause, "you are dangerously close. You are about a hundred yards away from the target."_

_Arthur looks around: in a tower on top of the fort wall, about ten yards to the north from where Arthur's team is, he sees people preparing for the strike in the Alliance command center. Somewhere in the middle between the command center and Arthur's position a squad of Alliance soldiers is hiding under an open arch in the wall, their rifles ready for the assault that would follow the airstrike. There are hundreds and hundreds more of them, waiting for their orders in the shade of Alliance-controlled buildings in this part of the fort. He knows that outside the walls of the fortress nine US Special Forces soldiers along with six British SAS have taken position, ready to interfere if something goes wrong in the course of the battle._

_Arthur is completely in control. He could swear his life on the coordinates he's just given. They're close, but it's necessary to get the laser on the target. They're inside a fort after all, and that frankly doesn't allow for too much space for maneuver. Risks need to be taken to get the job done. Besides, they worked from the exact same position the day before, Arthur knows from experience that it's safe._

_"We're perhaps a little too close," he replies, however, and adds, having decided that exercising some caution won't do any harm, "we'll pull back a few yards after this round."_

_"We are about to release," comes the reply._

_"Two minutes," says Arthur and clings to the ground. In the group of Alliance soldiers under the arch he spots a boy of about fifteen, clutching an AK-47, his eyes wandering around, his expression a mix of curiosity and raw fear. Some part of Arthur's mind tries to remember what he was up to five years before, when he himself was fifteen, but Arthur's unable to think about anything but the passing seconds, his teeth chattering, his body thrumming with anticipation._

_"Thirty seconds."_

_At fifteen Arthur was an emotional kid, short and scrawny, living in a state of perpetual rage, because the world around him failed to acknowledge how incredibly smart, talented and cute he was. And driven. Arthur at fifteen was unnaturally driven, that's the main reason why at twenty he is where he is – up to his ears in road dirt and sand, dripping down bitter sweat, coordinating an airstrike against a rebellious fortress in a godforsaken corner of Earth._

_"Fifteen seconds."_

_Roaring like an engine forced to decelerate in high gear, an arrow-shaped missile appears, zeroing in on its target. For a split second, Arthur freezes, refusing to believe his own eyes: the 2,000 pound JDAM-equipped piece of explosives is going north._

_"Pull back!" yells someone behind Arthur's back._

_Arthur surges to his feet and screams at the Alliance soldiers under the arch who start to run, having noticed themselves that the missile is not going to hit the building it was meant for, it's going for the ancient fortification above their heads. The Alliance generals in the command center are trapped; petrified, they watch the missile slam into the wall a few yards away from their position._

_The explosion sends a cloud of dust and debris hundreds of feet into the air. The boy holding the AK-47 runs for shelter. He stumbles, hit by the shock wave, his hand holding the machine gun jumps, and it fires a round, one of its bullets going straight into Arthur's knee. Behind them part of the wall collapses and a U-shaped hole the size of a small swimming pool appears in the fortification right below the command center._

_"Incoming shrapnel – get down!" is the last thing Arthur hears before the world around goes brown and the shock wave sends him down, where he remains, rolling in the dust, under the rain of fragments of blown-up rock and metal, screaming his lungs out at the excruciating, blinding pain in his leg._

_The worst thing about this dream is that he can never be certain how it will end. On a night when Arthur in reality is doing well, Arthur of the dream manages to outrun his fate. He jumps to his feet a few seconds earlier and meets the running child halfway, pulling him by the collar of his robe, throwing him to the ground and falling on top of him. The boy is saved, and Arthur's body is spared. This is a fairytale ending, and Arthur wakes up in cold sweat, grinding his teeth, angry with himself for being unable to face the truth, even in a dream. On a night when Arthur is weak, the dream ends in a small, crowded room at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center where an exhausted, somber-looking Major General pins a Purple Heart to Arthur's chest, and Arthur squeezes the grips of his crutches, feeling the blush of shame spreading over his face._

_This dream is too sad of a place to be. Arthur's mind rejects it. He closes this door, and reaches for another one. He bumps into Eames instead who squirms somewhere nearby, sweat-covered and irritating._

_"Arthur," he says quietly, "Qala-i-Jangi? Really?"_

_"Shit," Arthur mumbles. "Have I been talking again?"_

_"Talking?" Eames chuckles and moves closer on the bed. "You've been talking and yelling. Woke me up alright. I thought we were being murdered."_

_"Go away," Arthur moans and bats Eames with his hand, embarrassed._

_"Seriously, what were you doing there?" Eames is upon him, relentless like a hound following the scent trail._

_"Fuck you, Eames. I was on a CCT."_

_"How old were you at the time, remind me?"_

_"Twenty, almost twenty-one."_

_Eames snorts at that. "Arthur, you look so boringly normal. Not in the world would have I pegged you for the impostor and megalomaniac you just turned out to be."_

_Arthur sighs and turns to his uninjured side, carefully skimming his fingers over the bandages on his left upper arm. The fabric is warm to touch, underneath he can feel the blood throbbing in the healing wound. "You wouldn't have pegged me for an impostor, because I'm not one."_

_Eames hums, unconvinced. "Okay, let's pretend for a moment that I believed your claims. Why did you ever quit? The benefits must have been bar none."_

_"War, Eames. Too much stress. You can't really make a mistake – people will die."_

_"People will die anyway," he cuts Arthur short. "What was it, really? Crumbled under the weight of responsibility?"_

_"Yeah, that. Also, being surrounded by dumb-asses kind of turns me into a crazy gunman."_

_Eames laughs: "That's more like it."_

_The thing is: as opposed to the official version of events, Arthur will never know for sure what happened during that airstrike on a bright November morning. The pilot might have punched in a wrong digit while entering the coordinates just as easily as Arthur, who at twenty was an arrogant little schmuck who was never wrong and basically a superman in his own opinion, might have made a miscalculation or allowed a slip of the tongue that cost the lives of thirty people. The doubt, however repressed, will always live in the back of Arthur's mind._

_Eames continues blabbering, trying to sneak in more questions he wants answers for, but Arthur has already found another piece of memory. He throws it over his head and immerses into darkness._

_... Nhonha na jinela  
Co fula mogarim  
Sua mae tancarera  
Seu pai canarim_

_The song is interrupted by dry, loud laughter of an old man._

_Arthur is nine. He is sitting, cross-legged, on the white-tiled floor behind the counter of his grandfather's dry-cleaning. He doesn't have to raise his head and look to know that Grandpa is talking to Mrs. Hernandez who came to pick up her eldest son's suits._

_"Unfortunately, this isn't the case, Mr. Lau," Mrs. Hernandez continues the conversation in Patuá, shaking her head, – a short, stout woman, with soft black hair and sad eyes. "She refuses to speak anything but English. Not only Macanese - not a word of Cantonese, either, even though she spoke so well when she was little. Not even Portuguese, no. English, English, English – from morning till night. Croaking like a toad. Born and bred American. Californian." She scoffs._

_"The times are different now," says Grandfather, unconcerned. Arthur can hear him flip through the pages of the register. "That will be eighteen ninety-five."_

_"What about the little one?" Mrs. Hernandez presses on. "Does he speak Patuá?"_

_"His father is Jewish," Grandpa replies after a short pause, "it would be unfair if he spoke a language his father doesn't understand."_

_"But you baptized him, didn't you?" she asks in a hushed voice._

_"Of course, we did," Grandfather laughs. "We named him after myself, after all."_

_Above Arthur's head money changes hands and the goodbyes are being said. The bell chimes, as the door closes behind Mrs. Hernandez. They are alone. Grandfather picks up the song about the girl with the jasmine flower, and Arthur hums along._

_Arthur is just like Mrs. Hernandez's granddaughter – he understands Macanese, but speaks only English._

_From his spot on the floor he can see the noses of grandfather's shoes, – black, soft leather, well-shined. The legs of his pants are gray cotton. If Arthur lifts his eyes, he'll see a white, short-sleeved button-down, too loose for Grandfather's slim, wiry frame, and big, hairless arms moving something on top of the counter. If he cocks his head a bit further, he'll catch a glimpse of a scraggy neck, skin wrinkly and parchment thin, a heavy lower jaw, and a tight, choleric line of a mouth. What he won't see from this angle is a round, almost flat face, with wide cheekbones, a protruding aquiline nose, deep set, dark eyes – neither European, nor Asian, the high forehead and the receding hairline, bald spots above the temples, the feathery white hair._

_"Are you done there, you little monkey?" Grandfather yells after a moment's silence._

_The sound of his voice makes Arthur jump up and bend lower over his work. In his lap he's got five pages of long division and measurement concepts – his Math. This is Arthur's favorite part of the homework, left purposefully for the end, after he'd struggled through his English and Social Studies. This is how they do things in Grandfather's house: finish the most difficult task first, then get over with the easy one._

_Arthur grips his pencil tighter and buries his nose in the quad-lined pages. Grandpa walks out from behind the counter and starts lowering the gate of the shop. The clock on the opposite wall shows a quarter to seven, they're closing up. Arthur will mop up, while Grandfather counts the money from the cash register._

_Arthur's mom is going to pick them up in half an hour or so. She will drive by after having closed her pharmacy, the cigarette smoke in her hair mixed with the smell of medication, her laughter loud and happy. On their way home, she and Grandfather will talk about how much money they made and what sorts of strange customers they've had during the day._

_Arthur will hide in the back seat, temporarily forgotten, absorbed in his Game & Watch, anticipating the kind of dinner they're going to have and what cartoons they'll watch on TV – the happiest minutes of his day. He and Mom will check the homework together after dinner, and Grandpa will go upstairs and start playing his tapes on a beat cassette recorder. Arthur will go to bed at nine to the sounds of "Fado do Ciume"floating from the rooms above._

_This is a secure, carefree place, and he feels sad when Eames tears the thin fabric of memories apart, calling Arthur's name and shaking him by the shoulder. He knows something isn't right and he's got to wake up, but his grandfather's been dead for more than ten years, and Arthur's heart fills with sorrow as he watches the familiar silhouette freeze and fade into darkness, like a burning film._

_"Eames," he groans, burrowing deeper under the comforter, "why is it so fucking cold in here? Can we close the window?" because all of a sudden the air is the room is freezing, it burns Arthur's skin, it burns his throat when he breathes in._

_"The window is closed," Eames responds dryly. "You're running a fever. Can't you feel that?"_

_"Huh?" Arthur sighs and touches the back of his uninjured hand to his forehead. His face is numb, he can feel nothing but the slight pressure where his palm must be._

_"How about now?" Eames asks and a wide, soft palm covers Arthur's eyes. And yes, Arthur is definitely running a fever, it's strange he hasn't noticed before. "Can you feel it?"_

_"Much better this way," Arthur rasps, covering Eames's hand with his own to keep it on top of his burning eyelids. Eames's skin feels fantastic – refreshing and warm at the same time._

_He briefly slips into unconsciousness only to be awoken none too gently as he is being stripped of his sweat-drenched underwear and squeezed into a fresh set, to which he doesn't object in the slightest. He hears Eames and Jerry hiss at each other in the dimly lit room, discussing Arthur's state, but the sense of words being said escapes him. He is forced to push down two pills and some water and finally receives a quite painful IM in the left buttock. After that he is bundled into a blanket, like a newborn, and is left in peace, but not for long, because Eames, fully dressed, settles on the bed next to him and starts nagging at him, like a mosquito._

_"Arthur," he says, stifling a yawn, "you've got to really make an effort here. I'm not going to the mountain all by myself. Don't even hope to lie low while I'm doing your job. Think of Dr. Cobb, he'll be devastated if you don't show up."_

_Arthur opens his eyes at that, but the room is so dark it almost makes no difference, he can't see Eames either way. He's too exhausted to reply, so he just snorts and hopes it conveys the full measure of his disdain._

_Eames laughs quietly somewhere very close."You two exist in a perfect symbiosis of self-righteous intelligence and brute force. Tell me I'm wrong."_

_Wrong, Arthur thinks and snakes an arm out from under the blanket. He finds Eames's hand in the dark and brings it back where it belongs – covering Arthur's forehead, soothing the dull ache in his head. It appears Arthur is getting better, because now he can clearly feel the difference in temperature between Eames's palm – warm, and his own skin – cold, sweaty._

_Eames seems to get the hint this time and finally shuts up. For a few minutes Arthur hears nothing, but the sounds of the forest outside and Eames's breathing, quiet and measured. Then, he falls asleep._

_Arthur's last morning dream is short and fragmented. It starts with the sound of a gunshot and the vision of Iramowawe's cut teeth which morphs into the memory of their flight to Barlovento. He finds himself staring down at the shiny ribbon of the River, at the grey peaks of mountains in the distance. The shimmering fabric of water is suddenly very close and Arthur barely has the time to catch his breath before plunging into the darkness._

_He is imprisoned, immobilized by the weight of water that feels taut, almost solid around him. An odd apathy descends upon him. The waves that roared on the surface turn into a soundless, motionless plain when he is below. He moves his shoulders and through the murkiness sees his own hand, greenish in the dim light coming from above. Arthur is bleeding. He notices the coils of deep red dissipating in the water. He is disappearing with them. Arthur needs to wake up. He's desperately searching for a memory that could lead him back to reality, like the proverbial thread._

_He doesn't intend to, but he starts thinking of Eames. And then he is unable to stop. There are no graphic images clouding his mind, but he can still recall the warmth of Eames's fingers on his skin. His mind has a hard time accepting the idea, but his body thinks that Eames's hands belong on Arthur. There's joy, inexplicable and simple, and arousal, urgent, building in him, ready to spring. Relax, it's morning, he tells himself. He reaches down for his dick, and feels a stub of real pain in his arm. And then he wakes up._

_The room is grey with the first light of dawn. Arthur is lying in the center of the bed, he's a bit dizzy from sleeping on a solid surface, not in the hammock. And he feels hot, and squashed under the weight of Eames's body. Arthur freezes in shock. Eames has shifted in his sleep. He is lying, half splayed over Arthur's uninjured side, his arm a dead weight on Arthur's ribcage. Eames's right thigh is lodged firmly against Arthur's crotch, giving just the right amount of pressure to his hard-on. Arthur's shoulder and arm feel numb under Eames's weight._

_Arthur groans quietly, feeling incredibly tired and a little resentful, and aroused, and cheated, and uneasy. His wounded arm hurts enough to make him cry, but his erection throbs against the pressure of Eames's hip, unaffected. He squirms to slide from under Eames; the movement sends a wave of pleasure to his cock, and he stops. He can't leave. He craves relief. He wants this tension resolved, this thirst to be quenched here and now._

_He discovers he doesn't even need proper rutting. All he has to do is squeeze the solid, jeans-clad hip with his thighs and ride the wave. Just a little bit more pressure, and he will finally find a release. He knows. He'll sleep for a few days. He'll fall off the radar, Cobbs be damned, he'll be left alone. He will heal._

_He arches his back, pushing his hips against Eames's body, and maybe it's too hard, because Eames stirs awake. He props up on one arm, taking his weight off Arthur, and halts, realizing what's going on. Arthur squeezes his eyes shut and wills himself to believe that he is still dreaming, because in a dream there is no shame and no hesitation, and he only needs a few more thrusts to finish this and fall back into oblivious sleep._

_For a moment, he suspects that he is dreaming, because Eames does not start yelling or push him away. Eames's hands grab Arthur's ass, and it's a steel grip, short of painful, and pull him even closer, grinding Arthur's crotch harder against Eames's hip. He helps Arthur maintain the necessary rhythm and force of friction, when Arthur is ready to give up and just collapse, exhausted and trembling. It works. For both of them. Through the layer of fabric Arthur feels Eames's own erection growing. He imagines Eames's wide palm, closing around his dick, working him up, strong and gentle. He comes hard, with a yelp, muffled by his own hand._

_Eames drops him abruptly, Arthur can hear the clank of the belt buckle, followed by Eames's rugged breath. His eyes still closed, Arthur senses Eames move. His hand grabs the back of Arthur's neck, pushes his head up. Eames's cock, hard and heavy, slides over Arthur's lips, not pushing in, just rubbing against Arthur's mouth, leaving it sore. Arthur is captivated by how soft and smooth Eames's skin feels: he wants to part his lips and touch it with the tip of his tongue. But he doesn't; he breathes out through his mouth instead. Eames moans with relief as he comes, and his fingers are gentle on Arthur's face, caressing his jaw and cheekbones._

_For a few minutes the room is quiet. None of them moves. Then Eames gets up and opens the shutters on the window. Arthur feels the morning light creeping inside the room, but refuses to open his eyes. Eames gets back on the bed and starts removing Arthur's clothes, careful not to hurt the injured arm. He uses Arthur's t-shirt to clean the come off Arthur's face and stomach. Arthur shivers at the cold breeze on his skin, and then Eames leans over and wraps him in another blanket, dry and smelling of wool._

_Impossibly, Arthur is falling asleep again. He barely has the strength to think over a suitable retreat path for the next morning. A thought comes to him that Eames will probably be disinclined to admit the very fact of this night, and it's a comforting thought, it should be._

_He hears Eames drag off his jeans. He lifts the blanket letting the cool air in, and crawls under, settling next to Arthur. Silently, he wraps an arm around Arthur's shoulder, and draws him near in a move that isn't possessive, not even loving. It's... friendly. Companionable. His skin is cool where Arthur is pressed against him, and his fingers on Arthur's body feel positively icy. Arthur finds the sensation quite soothing. Eames's breathing is steady, his chest working as the bellows - breathe in, breathe out. Very soon he relaxes into sleep, and Arthur knows for sure that a retreat path won't be necessary. He quietly slides off Eames's shoulder, and Eames immediately turns his back at Arthur in his sleep. Arthur closes his eyes and falls into a blank, colorless abyss._


	5. Chapter 5 Down Slow

Arthur spent the following day in bed. He woke up early in the morning to the sound of the bedroom door closing behind Eames. Puzzled, he brought his fingers to his lips, remembering the glide of Eames's skin there. The mental image made his dick throb, but Arthur did nothing about it; the last thing he needed to do was to make it a habit of getting off on the memory of another man's touch. Defiant, he rolled over to Eames's side, buried his face in the pillow that smelled slightly of weed and aftershave, and forced himself back to sleep.

He woke up again at two in the afternoon, starving and in pain, but with a very normal body temperature, and feeling like a hazy veil had been raised from his eyes. He took a shower, had a meal with the PSP-playing Garth Jr. who explained that Eames and the gold miner had left to check the paths in the jungle. He then took his painkillers and antibiotics and retired back to bed. He didn't spare much thought to the fact of Eames's absence. Arthur would certainly make himself scarce if he had been in Eames's place. Eames was avoiding him, and in Arthur's opinion that was the best he could do.

The next time he woke up nocturnal moths and flying bugs were swarming in the darkness behind the mosquito net, and the light of a small candle cut through the shadows. Eames was moving about the room, drying his hair on a bath towel. Soon he eased into bed next to Arthur and blew the candle off. Arthur froze under the comforter, losing the rest of his sleep, petrified at the memory of the previous night.

Eames sighed in the dark and said, "The coast is clear. We're moving out before dawn." He paused, waiting for a response which didn't come. Arthur's jaws felt as if they were glued together. Eames settled on the bed, his back turned to Arthur.

"Arthur, I know you're awake," he said after a moment. "It's alright, really. I've been watching your back, you've been watching my back. We're sort of isolated here. Throw in the post-traumatic stress – and there you go. Things like that happen, you know. There's no need to castigate yourself." He waited again.

_If everything was as simple as you put it_, Arthur thought, but said nothing. In reality they'd been only isolated for a couple of days, and even given the psychological effect of the trauma, Arthur could not justify what had happened the night before.

"That's settled then," Eames continued his monologue. "Go back to sleep now."

xxx

"Incredible," mumbled Jerry, checking the display on the thermometer he'd just plucked from Arthur's mouth. He put it aside and plastered his hand against Arthur's forehead, disbelieving. Arthur attempted to raise an eyebrow at this sort of patronizing treatment, but it was really difficult to do given the pressure of Jerry's palm.

They were sitting face-to-face on the bar-stools in the Garths' kitchen. Jerry had absolutely refused to let them out of the house until he received the proof that Arthur wasn't going to collapse with fever somewhere in the middle of the jungle. Thus, the thermometer.

Arthur still felt a bit weak, but he'd rather die than admit the fact. Besides, the fever had been gone for almost twenty-four hours, and there was clearly no point stalling.

"Ninety-seven point eight," Jerry concluded, checking the thermometer once again.

"Does it mean we can go now?" Eames demanded. He'd been standing by the window, waiting for Jerry to finish with his ministrations, shooting anxious glances at the sunrise outside and wringing his arms dramatically.

"I guess," Jerry answered and handed a plastic pill container to Arthur. "Let me remind you: these, twice a day. No skipping, no stopping the treatment before the two-week period ends. Unless you want to get your arm cut off. I want you to take one now, and the second one before going to bed."

Arthur stared at the fresh bandages covering the wound on his arm and wondered if Jerry was deliberately trying to scare him into submission. He accepted a glass of water from the old man and obediently downed the pills. Eames grabbed his backpack from the floor and headed for the hallway, impatient to leave. _What the hell has gotten into him?_ Arthur thought, following Eames to the door. Then he remembered the previous night, and felt his stomach tie into knots.

"Keep in touch, sunshine," Jerry said, giving Eames a hug at the gate.

"Yeah, yeah, sure," Eames muttered, nodding frantically and looking through the gold miner, as if his mind was already traveling.

"Arthur," Jerry interrupted quietly after Eames had slunk out of the door, and Arthur had begun saying his thanks and goodbyes, "don't forget your porte-bonheur." And he presented Arthur with a lidded glass container on the bottom of which sloshed the slightly flattened bullet he'd extracted from Arthur's arm two days earlier.

"Uh, thanks." Arthur shoved the present into the pocket of his hoodie and shook the gold miner's hand. He felt an unexpected rush of sadness at leaving behind the oasis of stability which was Jerry's company.

"Good luck," Jerry wished as Arthur stepped out the gate, and there was no smile in the gold miner's eyes.

They covered the distance to the mountain in three and a half hours. It was before eleven in the morning when Arthur heard the familiar roar of the waterfall and saw fragments of the greyish imposing mass through the thinning vegetation. They'd been walking in silence which felt rather tense, keeping a considerable distance between them, and both sighed with relief as their feet stepped on the rocky path that led inside Ashembo.

They climbed up the hill from which the Marikitare had attacked them two days before, and behind it saw a ravine with a clear, fast stream. The ground on the other side of it was covered with a layer of white ash, about half a foot in width, which marked the beginning of the forbidden territory.

A camp fire was burning at the foot of the hill. Sitting on the small boulder, his feet in the water, was Etewa. He was alone. His quiver and bow were on the ground, resting against the stone, next to Cobb's backpack.

A twig snapped under Arthur's sole, and in the blink of an eye a wooden arrow and the bow were aimed at his face. For a second Etewa stared at them with calm resolve, and then lowered the bow, his face splitting into a friendly grin.

"Where's Cobb?" Arthur asked in lieu of greeting, already wound up and dreading the answer. Etewa shrugged and pointed to the other side of the stream where the path disappeared in the narrow passage between the steep walls of the mountain.

"Fuck," Eames mumbled and kneeled near the stream. He leaned down and splashed some water into his face. "When did he leave?" he asked in Spanish, filling his flask from the stream.

"How do you think?" Etewa said. "As soon as we got here. The day before yesterday, just before dusk."

"Shit. And he hasn't been back since?" Eames quickly looked at Arthur who was racing through the possibilities in his mind.

"No," was the answer.

"Why did you let him go alone?" Arthur asked, grabbing Cobb's bag from the ground and searching through the content. Inside he saw Cobb' hammock, and the now useless maps they'd been given before leaving Caracas.

"He had your gun," Etewa said with a wry smile. "He wanted to go. Why would I stop him? The shapori is an old man."

"But it's been almost thirty-six hours and he's not back." Arthur drew the line.

"No," Etewa answered simply, and Arthur fought a sudden impulse to punch the Yanomamo in the face.

Instead, he took off his shoes and stepped into the icy water. Eames and the Indian exchanged a few worried phrases in Yanomaman behind his back, but Arthur didn't really care anymore. Soon he heard Eames's breathing amplified by the mountain walls, as he followed Arthur through the crevice.

The passage was barely wide enough for a grown man to walk through. The rough walls scraped against the sleeves of Arthur's hoodie as he went. Water was constantly dripping on their heads, and the smell of rotten leaves was rising from the ground. Closer to the end, the crack became considerably more narrow and they had to shoulder their way through.

As the walls finally parted letting them into the open, they found themselves on the small terrace that ran along the inner side of the mountain. On their right the terrace disappeared behind the light haze covering the waterfalls. The wall of falling water began somewhere on top of the mountain and ended in the lake on the bottom of the huge crater that lay right under their feet. The sun was shining and the birds were screaming in the jungle in the dip below, their loud shrieks almost covering the rumble of the waterfall.

Eames stopped a bit behind Arthur and stretched his shoulders.

"You know which way, don't you?" That was more of a statement than a question.

Eames nodded and led the way.

There was nothing remotely threatening about the sacred mountain. It probably looked different after dark, but in the broad daylight the place seemed full of life and … mundane. Eames didn't look half as tense as he'd been in the jungle. Through the overwhelming noise that surrounded them Arthur heard him start whistling. As they walked the uneven floor of the terrace, slowly approaching the waterfalls, Arthur stared at the blue bandana that hovered in front of him, and thought, _This is it. The moment of truth._

It was noon when they entered the sacred cave.

xxx

As they left the wall of water behind and moved deeper inside the mountain, the darkness closed in on them, and Eames switched on his flashlight. They covered a few feet in complete darkness and turned twice, when suddenly Arthur saw a reflection of yellowish light on the wall in front of them. They made another turn, and indeed they were in a wide, dome-like corridor lit up by a single, glass-bell-covered light bulb.

"We're here," Eames said, putting away his Klarus.

The corridor grew increasingly cluttered with what looked like boxes of humanitarian aid and unused pieces of furniture which had found their way into the cave by the mysterious ways of creator, no less.

They passed a small electric generator, whirring quietly in a dip in the wall. Eames shot a quick look over his shoulder, checking for Arthur's reaction, but Arthur, who had resigned to not being impressed by anything else on this journey, just bluntly stared back.

They climbed up three steps cut in the stone and stopped at the entrance of a spacious round cavern which was lit by the light coming from a hole in the ceiling above the center of the room.

_Here's a natural shabono_, Arthur thought, _not a man-made one_.

"No matter what, do as I say. Do you understand?" Eames said, not looking at Arthur. He unholstered his gun from the belt of his jeans and unbuckled his machete.

"Is that really necessary?" Arthur asked as he did the same.

"No, not really. Just a precautionary measure," was the answer.

They crossed the threshold, and Arthur's heart gave a start. On the ground in the middle of the cavern he saw three figures, lying on a colorful square of fabric right under the ring of light, coming from the ceiling. The three bodies, their hands interlocked, their poses unnaturally stiff, looked like corpses ready for a burial. Arthur recognized the white nape of Dom's head, and Mal's shoulders, covered with a floral throw for warmth, her glasses folded neatly on the floor next to her. He also saw a small, gray-haired woman whose arthritic fingers dug deeply into the skin of Mal's wrist.

He walked faster, overtaking Eames, approached the sleepers and kneeled between the Cobbs, squeezing Mal's shoulder with a tentative hand. Under his fingers was a stiff, cold muscle. Only the soft sound of breathing told him Mal was still alive. After a moment's hesitation, Arthur shook Cobb's shoulder to no effect. He gave Cobb a light slap on the face.

"Don't," Eames said behind him. He hovered over Arthur, his gun ready, aiming at the far corner of the cavern. There Arthur saw a makeshift bed made of strips of tree bark and pieces of old fabric, set up on top of an enormous stone chest. On this improvized berth sat a tiny, gaunt old man, wearing a simple loincloth. He peered at them from behind long white locks that obscured his beardless face, and took a draw from a black wooden pipe. Arthur couldn't help but notice the uncanny resemblance between the shaman and Iramowawe. They probably _were_related after all. The shapori cocked his head, giving Arthur a once-over and then stared at Eames with a wry smile.

Eames holstered his gun and spoke Ye'kuana, gesturing at Arthur and the bodies on the floor. Arthur listened, apprehensive, trying to decipher what was being said. He'd never seen their guide being so focused and self-contained. Eames's mannerisms, the way he spoke, his posture, the line of his shoulders were full of dignity. Even his voice sounded different, lower, with more gravity. However, Arthur was too excited to elaborate on the idea, he concentrated on Arasuwe's reactions instead. The old man looked entirely unimpressed by Eames's speech. Without saying a word, the shapori raised a hand, interrupting him mid-sentence, and then gestured at the bodies and gave a quick nod.

Eames produced three hundred-dollar bills from the back pocket of his jeans and showed them to the shaman, letting him take a good look at the money. A sly grin split the old man's face, he grabbed a long stick, lying at the foot of the stone chest and held it out to Eames. The stick bore a small whitewashed dipper on one of the ends. Eames placed the bills inside, and Arasuwe pulled the stick back. He took out the bills and folded them carefully in a bundle. He then stood up from his nest, pushed the lid of the chest back by a couple of inches and threw the money in. Having done that, he groped inside the chest and took out a minuscule sachet made of dried blackened leaves which he threw at Eames. Eames caught the sachet in the air, nodded to the old man and beckoned to Arthur. They sat down on the ground under the curious look of the shapori.

Eames deftly undid the string holding the dark leaves together and poured the black coarse powder on the top of the polished rock lying directly below ceiling window.

"What is going on?" Arthur asked, looking at Eames's fingers roll a one hundred bolivares note into a tube.

"This is pretty simple," Eames replied, not looking at him, still sounding clipped and focused as if he were in the middle of a job. "We take the epena, we go in and find your friends. The difficult part is to convince them to go back."

"Wait, wait." Arthur stared at him incredulously. "Do you mean going into trance?"

"A dream," Eames answered, "a very complicated, drug-induced dream."

Arthur squeezed his eyes shut and scrubbed his face with a palm, trying to shake off the panic that rose in his chest as the reality spiraled out of control.

"Wouldn't it be easier to simply wake them up?"

"No, I'm afraid not. Not in this case," Eames answered, using one of the blades on his Victorinox to arrange the powder on the stone into four neat rows, with the precision and skill that implied an ample experience. "There's a fifty-fifty chance one of them won't come back. Or more than one. This substance is very unstable. Are you willing to risk one of your friends?"

He stared sharply at Arthur, waiting for a response.

"Has it happened to someone you know?" Arthur asked and took the rolled bill from Eames's hand.

"Yes," Eames answered. "To become a vegetable for the rest of your days – I wouldn't wish that on an enemy."

They moved closer to the sleepers. Arthur was holding Dom's hand, as Eames had instructed him, and listened to the guide's explanations, trying his best not to laugh as the directions became absurd.

"You'll go in first," Eames summarized, oblivious to Arthur's skepticism. "Dr. Cobb is your friend, you should find him with no difficulty. Talk to him, show him your arm. It will probably be uninjured in the dream, point that out. I'll join you as soon as I make sure everything's alright here."

"How do we do it?" Arthur asked, still not knowing what to make out of it all. "How do we come back?"

"You kill yourself. In the dream." Eames supplied with a sigh. "Or each other. That last thing is entirely up to you."

The first draw of the powder made Arthur sneeze really hard. He barely had time to turn away from the stone in order not to blow off the rest of the epena. As he shook with sneezing fits, he heard the shaman give a high-pitched laugh from his nest. Eames cursed quietly, putting a steadying hand on Arthur's side.

"Give it another go," he said, and his whisper sounded unexpectedly loud.

The second draw felt different. The particles of coarse powder scratched the back of Arthur's throat, making his eyes water. Then it hurt as if a thousand needles burrowed through his forehead.

"That's it," said Eames and his grip on Arthur tightened, keeping him upright, as Arthur's head suddenly felt much heavier than his body.

His vision blurred, Eames's face in front of him going green, then doubling and tripling, before the world around was swallowed by darkness. The last thing he felt was the hold of Eames's hands lowering him slowly on the wet rocks.

xxx

Arthur woke up with his head still heavy. He sat up with effort, blinking to shake off the effects of the powder. The back of his hoodie was unpleasantly damp, and the bare rock he was sitting on was digging quite painfully into his backside. He hadn't been expecting much from the shapori's drug, yet he couldn't help feeling a mild disappointment at the fact that he hadn't experienced the promised 'complicated dream'. He looked at his watch and huffed as he saw the time. He'd been out for less than a couple of minutes. _Well_, he thought, _it was worth a try nonetheless. Now- time to shake Dom awake_.

Then he looked around and lost the ability to breathe. Eames was nowhere to be seen. He was alone in the cavern, the shaman having disappeared from his trunk and apparently snatching Dona Mercedes with him. Only Dom and Mal were still asleep on the ground, their fingers entwined.

However, it was the cave that had undergone the most inexplicable of changes. The quiet rumbling of the waterfalls which had been muffled by the walls of the mountain became an angry, deafening roar. While Arthur was out, the room had lost its outer wall which was now replaced with a wide, smooth terrace. Arthur suspected it opened right above the crater, but couldn't prove his theory as the cave was separated from the rest of the world by a wall of falling water. Either the mountain had shifted on its axis, or the Ashembo Waterfalls had changed their course while Arthur was drugged and now ran exactly over the cavern.

Arthur stood up groggily and approached the edge of the terrace. Within seconds he felt the mist from the waterfall land on his skin. He reached out and let his fingers brush the fabric of water, icy cold. A tangible, irrefutable proof that his surroundings were a real place. Yet it could not have possibly exist.

It was a paradox.

He wiped his wet fingers against the fabric of his jeans and stopped in his tracks at a flash of recollection. He pulled down the collar of his t-shirt and stared at his left upper arm, shocked. He thought of waking up Mal and Dom, demanding some kind of a logical explanation. And then he heard voices.

He walked towards the sound, turning a corner on the terrace which he knew hadn't been there a few minutes before. As he left the wall of water behind, he found himself on an open plateau. A fire was burning, warm and inviting, by the steep mountain wall. Arasuwe was crouched over it, feeding dry leaves to the small, unsure flame and singing. Dona Mercedes, wrapped in a moth-eaten woolen blanket, was sitting on a mat by the fire and scribbling something furiously in an old block-note.

The old woman peered at Arthur over the low-hanging smoke and asked, "What is your name?"

"I'm Arthur Levine," he said, "and you must be Mercedes Guijon." She nodded in acquiescence and leafed through the pages of her writing, as if looking for a confirmation to Arthur's words.

"Dr. Cobb said you would come," Mercedes said after a pause, seemingly satisfied with what she'd found on the lined pages. "Are you going to go under?"

"Under where?" Arthur asked, feeling lost for a second.

"Under this dream into another," she answered, humorless.

"So this _is_ a dream," Arthur marveled. His mind, gripped by the tangibility of objects it had been presented with, had stubbornly refused to accept the idea. However, a direct confirmation coming from another person was all it took for the reality to finally start sinking in.

"Of course, it is," replied the curer. She levered herself off the bamboo mat and stumbled in the direction of the cave, beckoning Arthur to follow. "Mrs. Cobb went under- I don't know how long ago. It's been many, many days." She sighed.

Inside the cave Mercedes kneeled by the polished rock, opened a small sachet that looked just like the one the shapori had given to Eames, and repeated the powder spreading ritual. She handed him a tiny wooden pipe instead of a rolled bill.

"Dr. Cobb went after her about a month ago. It's been too long. You have to remind him."

"Of what?" Arthur asked dumbly, trying to process the new information. A month? His Spanish was in need of a serious brush up, since he was obviously unable to make sense of the simplest things being said. He resumed his position on the floor and took the offered pipe from the curer's hands. Smooth and warm, it felt every bit real on his palm.

"That we all have to wake up," said Mercedes.


	6. Chapter 6 If Things Were Perfect

Arthur killed the engine and checked his reflection in the rear view mirror. He started to unbuckle the seat belt, and then halted when his brain processed what his eyes had seen. Slowly, he looked back at his reflection.

Arthur wasn't normally a suit person. Well, he was one when he was required to be present during something official, in what he called his 'hotel security look'. Generally though, as soon as he got to his workplace, he quickly lost the jacket, rolled up his sleeves and loosened the tie, leaving a couple of top buttons on his button-down undone if he felt like it. That was his usual 'let's get down to business' attire. It helped him stay focused. On his own time, he would wear a tie, in combination with shirt-sleeves and a pair of jeans - the tie would help him look and feel more put together. He would wear a proper button-down as well, again with a pair of jeans. Arthur was ready to admit that jeans managed to find their way in most outfits he wore when left completely to his own devices.

"How is it that you wear the most casual clothes and still make an impression of wearing a monkey suit?" Ariadne would remark on occasion. She was a good girl - his fiancee, a bit blunt at times, but honest. Safe.

Arthur would reply by asking to spare him her hipster attitude. In response, she would punch him, painfully, in the chest and demand to take his words back, because Ariadne, who at twenty-five had just gotten her PhD and was putting up with Dom's nonsense in the lab on a daily basis, was in no way a hipster.

The man staring back at him from the rear view mirror looked like a male lead in a Hong Kong melodrama: he was wearing a navy three-piece suit. With an actual vest. And the hair. Lord, the hair. It was _gelled_. Arthur blinked and touched his hand to the monstrosity on his head, refusing to accept it was real. It was. It left a sheen of sticky moisture on his fingers. He scoffed and turned his attention to the suit. It was fine wool, _not _the color monochrome-loving Arthur would actually choose, overly dramatic, most likely overpriced. It made him look good, though, more important than he really felt.

He checked the pockets on his jacket and pants. Empty, virginally clean. The chest pocket on his vest contained a wallet which looked nothing like the one Arthur owned and a white invitation card with the monogram "D&M" on the front. Arthur opened it and read

_with love and joy in our hearts,  
we  
Magalie Meunier  
and  
Dominic Cobb  
invite you to join us  
as we reaffirm our wedding vows  
and celebrate the 10th anniversary  
of our marriage_

_Magalie! _Arthur nearly moaned with laughter.

"Arthur, do you know how many women named Magalie are left in the French-speaking world today?" Mal said the first time they met, after Arthur had addressed her by the name that was on her personal file. It happened some time before Arthur met Dom. She took off her glasses and smiled at him, warily. "Zéro. You want to know why? Because they all, _all_, died of boredom."

The newly-hired, twenty-four-year-old Arthur shifted from one leg to the other, gave her a blunt look and asked: "What should I call you, then?"

She pinned the glasses back on her nose and looked at him, studying. "My step-father calls me Malorie, which is the anglicized form of maloret. That's the Old French for malheureux. It means-"

"The unhappy one," Arthur supplied, proud of the little school level French that was still left in his head.

"Exactly. You can call me that. My husband calls me Mal, because he knows I'm essentially evil. Choose whatever you like best."

So, Magalie and Dominic.

In the glove compartment he found a flat white gift box, tied with a purple ribbon. The box was heavy, something slid inside of it with a metallic thump, as Arthur gave it an experimental shake. Silverware? Finally, it all started to make sense.

Arthur left his car parked three blocks away from the Cobbs' residence in Pasadena. He had his watch on, but it had stopped at a quarter to twelve, the sweep hand trembling near, but never quite crossing to two.

The door of the Cobbs' house was open, as usual. Arthur knocked formally but invited himself in without hesitation. He looked around the familiar hallway: the door of the closet stood half-open, spilling on the floor a sack with clubs and a golf ball; junk mail was piling up in its usual spot, under an antique dresser to the right of the entrance. The house was quiet.

Arthur was going to leave the gift box on the dresser and go check the small patio in the backyard, as this was where Dom and Mal liked to spend mornings on their time off. Suddenly, he heard something crash above his head in one of the bedrooms on the second floor. The crash was followed by a loud wail. Arthur heard the sound of muffled voices and stomping feet on the staircase and tried to fade into the surroundings, as the familiar throaty voice yelled somewhere very close: "Va te faire foutre, trouduc!" A second later, a girl of about eight, wearing a short summer dress and holding a tablet under her arm came flying down the stairs and disappeared in the dark corridor, leading to the backyard.

The wailing above Arthur's head stopped, and a whiny, high-pitched voice lamented in a ridiculous mixture of English and French: "Maman! Daddy! Peluche just broke my Hogwarts Castle and called me an a-word! Maman! Daddy!" The voice drew nearer, and Arthur clung to the wall, praying he wouldn't be seen in this spot in the dark hallway. A short, stripes-wearing figure with an unruly mop of blond hair rolled down the stairs and, breathing heavily, followed Philippa through the dark corridor. Immediately, the quiet of the summer morning exploded with laughter and a torrent of rapid-fire French. Arthur sighed and took off his fancy jacket, holding it in the crook of his arm. It was going to be a long day.

xxx

"You should've left it on the gift table, you know," Dom said, pointing at the box Arthur had placed on the table between his wine glass and a vase with fresh flowers. "There's no need to carry it around with you. We still have two hours left before the ceremony."

"It's okay," Arthur refused, "I like it. There might be something very cool inside."

"Too bad you don't remember what it is," said Phillipa Cobb, otherwise known as Peluche, slurping on her soup. Arthur stared at the copper-colored curls that fell on her face and wondered when exactly it happened to her to become this sharp-eyed, smart tomboy. He tried to remember how old she was and thought she couldn't be older than six, even though the curious child staring back at him looked about eight or nine years old.

"I'm thinking about keeping it, anyway," Arthur replied and smiled at her, enjoying the puzzled look on Peluche's face. "I like the box too much."

"Mom, can we not let Arthur to the wedding?" Phillipa asked with a frown.

"Don't be ridiculous. It isn't even funny." Mal dismissed her, shaking her head. She gave Arthur a tired smile and caressed James who'd fallen asleep in her lap.

It was close to two in the afternoon. They were seated around a wooden dinner table in the backyard of the Cobbs' house. The lunch was just served and eaten, only Phillipa was still chasing her soup around the plate. Dom, wearing a pair of soft jeans and his favorite shirt, which he claimed to have had since his university years, was playing a host to their small party, taking care of Arthur and Mal, who was occupied with James.

A group of men in blue overalls were setting up an enormous white tent on the far side of the backyard. Two more figures in blue were putting up rows of chairs on the sides of the improvised aisle.

"Someone needs to go phone Dad," Mal said to Dom, carefully switching hands, trying not to wake James. "You want to take care of him while I'm making the call?"

"It's okay, I'll go inside and call him," Dom replied and pointed at Arthur. "Stay here, you've got company." He got up and gave Arthur a friendly pat on the shoulder. He looked absolutely relaxed, rested. Serene. Arthur turned and followed him with his eyes as Dom entered the house.

"Wait, Dad. I'm coming with you," Peluche said and trailed behind Cobb, carrying away her plate which was still half-full.

A bee, drawn by the smell of overripe melon and cured ham, landed on the plate of fruit in the center of the table. Arthur took a sip of his pineau, silent, counting the blue and white stripes on the back of James's tee. Mal gently rocked James in her arms and glanced at the workers who were arguing agitatedly over the erection of the tent.

"So _this _is why you are here," Mal said suddenly, avoiding Arthur's eyes, and nodded at the gift box lying in front of him.

"Well, actually, I'm not sure. I know it's weird, but I can't really remember. I'm going to do the best man's duty, I suppose." Arthur cleared his throat. "Do you actually need a best man for this type of thing?"

"We need you for this type of thing," Mal answered, still looking down, caressing the crown of James's head. "We just need a little bit more time. Give us these hours, Arthur. Let us have this time. Let _me_ have this."

"What, the ceremony?" Arthur asked, a bit baffled. "How am I responsible-"

She stopped him with a sigh, her expression growing tired. "You know, just forget what I said. How have you been lately? Anything new going on in San-Bernardino Valley?"

"Uhm, nothing new that I know of," Arthur said. A recollection, a ghost of something important yet long forgotten suddenly crossed his mind. He paused for a second, before continuing, happy to find a suitable subject to keep the conversation flowing. "How was the trip to Venezuela? Found anything useful?"

Mal stared at him in silence for a long second. Arthur shifted under her gaze, and for the first time since he got there actually _looked_ closely at her. She was very thin, the cut of her string top emphasized the way her collar bones were about to pierce through the pale skin on her chest. Her hair was longer than Arthur had ever seen her wear it. And her eyes were bloodshot and sad. There was a tragic, forlorn expression Arthur didn't recognize. All of a sudden he felt worried. "It was tolerable," she replied slowly, "a lot of rubbish to dig through before we found the grain of truth. But the results are more than satisfying."

"Mal, is everything okay at home? With the kids?" he asked, unable to stop himself, expecting her to bristle and tell him off for disrespecting the boundaries.

She closed her eyes and her mouth compressed into a thin line. For a fleeting moment, the expression on her face was disgruntled, almost furious, it was such an abrupt change that it made Arthur draw back in his chair. She didn't yell.

"Absolutely," she said, after a short pause, and Arthur overheard the intonation of Dom in the way she spoke. Her expression softened. "Arthur, you know how I am. I'm sorry, I know how much you care. We're fine and I'm very glad you could make it here. We don't have that much time left."

Arthur frowned, there was something off about her constantly mentioning the time.

Mal glanced at the workers who had wrapped up and were clearing their equipment. The tent for the ceremony was towering above the lawn like the top of a giant cream cake, the rows of chairs looking like some sort of overly extravagant decorations. She turned to Arthur. "Dom wanted to speak with you before the ceremony. I think now is the right time. He'll be in his study. And we have to go get ready, don't we?" She smiled at James who had blinked awake and made him sit up in her lap. "On y va, bogosse? Wanna tell me what you think of Mommy's dress?"

"Okay." Arthur rose from his chair and put his jacket on. "I guess, I'll see you at the ceremony."

He was about to enter the house when Mal called him. Arthur turned and saw she was smiling, curious and tender. "You look stunning," she said, gesturing at his suit. "This is so you. Try and keep this up."

Arthur looked over the suit again and thought he couldn't concede on this one, but he still thanked her, feeling relieved that her mood had lightened.

xxx

"It's going to be quick," Dom said, fixing the cuff-links. "We'll say the vows, nothing special. Then we want to, you know, sit down with friends for the last time. Say our good-byes."

"Are you going on a honeymoon?" Arthur asked, perplexed. He'd been waiting for Dom in a leather armchair next to Dom's desk. The sun was shining outside, but the wind playing with the curtains on the window in Cobb's study was cold.

Dom smiled and shook his head. "We are going home, Arthur. Away from here."

"Paris?" Arthur felt more and more irrelevant with every passing minute.

"Do you remember the trip to Venezuela?" Dom opened the drawer of his desk and took out an open bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Arthur did and nodded.

"We had a breakthrough. Our lives are going to change very soon." He walked around the desk, moved a chair to sit next to Arthur and handed him one of the tumblers.

Arthur accepted the offered glass and frowned. It was very unlike Cobb to be openly enthusiastic about something. With Dom optimism had always been expressed with caution, unless the enthusiasm was premeditated, intended to ignite the interest of a prospective investor or research partner. When Cobb was being himself, among friends, there was a shade of a doubt behind each statement, a dose of healthy skepticism. At times Arthur admired this particular trait, but there were also moments when it drove him up the wall. That night, however, Dom looked unusually self-assured which contrasted sharply with the lost and unhappy way Mal had been carrying herself.

"To us," Dom said softly, "to our success."

They drank their whiskey and stayed silent for a minute.

"I spoke with Mal," Arthur began, having decided it was a good time to discuss what had been bothering him for a while. "She wouldn't say anything to me, but - Dom, is she alright?"

"D'you think I don't know?" Cobb got up and began pacing the room, his fingers trembling on the glass he was still holding in his hand. "Arthur, she's very tired." He glanced at the window and took a deep breath as a gust of cold air moved the curtains. "When we get home, everything will get back to normal."

He stared at Arthur and suddenly the look in his eyes was pained, tormented. "I'm thirty-three. This project, if we manage to carry it to its end, will be the making of my career. It'll be the making of Mal's career." He corrected himself and finished the contents of his glass in a gulp. "I couldn't be happier about the sort of work we're doing now, but this... this find takes us to a whole new level." He placed the tumbler on the desk and finished, dismissive, "She'll get better as soon as we're back in the lab. She always has."

Arthur started to ask about what was wrong with Mal, when a knock on the door interrupted him mid-sentence. The door opened just a crack, and someone behind it, some man Arthur couldn't see from his spot by the desk, spoke quietly to Cobb. It was a vaguely familiar voice, firm and confident, Arthur tried to remember where he'd heard it before, but couldn't place it no matter how hard he tried.

"Excellent," Dom replied to the man and gestured at his suit. "I'm ready, will be there in a minute."

The door closed with a creak, and Cobb smiled at Arthur. "It's time."

xxx

They stepped into the cooling evening air and shook hands with a short, bushy-eyebrowed Catholic priest who'd been waiting for them under the tent. He, too, looked familiar, and Arthur tried to remember where and how they'd met, but then he saw Ariadne, walking towards them between the slowly filling rows of chairs. She gave him a quick kiss and agreed to keep an eye on the gift box, while Arthur was occupied. There was an awkward hitch when she leaned in to give Dom a hug, and he suddenly drew back, making her fall slightly into him, her hands slipping over the white cotton of his shirt, and they all laughed, light-hearted. She took a seat in the first row, the gift box placed neatly in her lap.

The small garden was now full of people. A flock of cream velvet wearing hostesses were circling the perimeter, seeing the guests to their seats. Arthur noticed Dr. Nash among the arriving crowd, carrying a vase with a white Phalaenopsis that he clutched to his chest. Ambushed by one of the hostess girls, he was relieved of his cargo and escorted, firmly but gently, to the seat next to Ariadne's. The wind carried the fragments of their conversation, the words 'a happy occasion' and 'look lovely', followed by Ariadne's dry laugh. _What is he doing here?_ Arthur thought, but at that moment he heard the first notes of Pachebell's 'Canon' from inside the house, and saw Miles and Mal step out of the back entrance.

The bride was wearing a long evening dress of deep burgundy with open shoulders, and looked nothing like the Mal Arthur had known. That Mal had been understated, sacrificing luxury in favor of comfort, using the pair of old glasses just because she'd gotten used to them, and hiding a beautiful body under worn-out jeans and fleece shirts, because – _hey, she worked in the lab_. The woman Arthur saw Professor Miles lead down the aisle was still Mal, the only difference being that now the clothes she wore were somehow the representation of her spirit – passionate, fearless.

As they approached, she gave Arthur a nervous smile. Then she looked at Dom and suddenly seemed vulnerable, unsure, like a little girl waiting for a parent's approval. Dom took her hands in his own, reassuring, and quietly said 'hey' as he gave her palms a gentle squeeze. The last notes of 'Canon' stopped resonating under the white tent, and in the hushed silence the priest began his speech about the importance of renewing the vows at a certain moment in one's life.

xxx

When the official part of the ceremony was over, the happy couple and the guests took their seats at long, rectangular tables under the tent. Arthur was sitting on Dom's right, next to Ariadne and a dull, middle-aged man who wore a hideous checkered suit and looked like an old time salesman.

The DJ had started the music and the host announced the first dance. Mal and Dom rose and stepped on the dance floor to the sounds of 'Non, je ne regrette rien' which was met with a hearty laugh. The guests clapped their hands and wolf-whistled. Ariadne left her seat and attempted to drag Arthur with her, but he refused. So she went, all by herself, stopping for a minute by the kids' table where Phillipa was playing with her tablet and James was asleep on two chairs moved together, and then joined a group of girls swaying to the music near the edge of the dance floor.

"Fascinating," mumbled the checkered suit on Arthur's right.

The man had migrated, uninvited, to Ariadne's seat and now was regarding the surroundings with a mixture of curiosity and contempt. Arthur frowned disapprovingly at the salesman and felt momentarily sickened by the movement of yellow and brown checkers as the man lifted a hand and scrubbed pensively at the two-day stubble covering his cheek. The suit, as Arthur had named him, caught Arthur stare and smiled at him, the playfulness not quite reaching his eyes.

"That's a very nice suit," he gave out in the blandest North Midland Arthur had ever heard. "Who's the maker?"

"Um, I- ugh." Arthur looked at Ariadne who seemed absorbed by the view of Dom and Mal exchanging a kiss at the final accords of the song. "I don't know really. I, um, should have checked the label?"

The smile on the man's face turned sugary sweet before he reached out, pulled the lapel on Arthur's left aside and peered curiously at Arthur's shoulder. Arthur hit at the intruding hand by instinct and rose from his seat, outraged. "What's wrong with you, man?"

The man raised his hands, trying to appease Arthur's anger, but his answer was drowned in cheers and applause as the surroundings suddenly went wild, people raising to their feet and moving to the dance floor to join the happy couple. The checkered suit, too, got up and barged right into Arthur's personal space.

"I never knew," he yelled, trying to overpower the surrounding noise, "they had French farmhouses and orchards in Pasadena." And he pointed at something behind Arthur's back. Arthur looked in the offered direction and realized in disbelief that the back of the Cobb's residence indeed looked like it belonged to a French farmhouse, with small white-shuttered windows and a green vine crawling up the grayish stones, covering the wall. The house was separated from the lawn where the tent had been set by a veritable orchard, the spreading branches of its cherry-trees creating a convenient shade over the patio.

"Gotta run!" the suit breathed into his ear and shouldered his way past Arthur, moving towards the house, against the waves of the arriving crowd.

Arthur watched the man run between the rows of chairs of the improvised aisle, the back of his checkered suit flashing in and out of shade of the trees as he crossed the garden and disappeared in the back entrance of the residence.

Arthur hesitated for a moment, distracted by Ariadne, who appeared out of nowhere and was pulling him insistently by the sleeve in the direction of the approaching Cobbs. She was jabbering away happily. Not even looking at him. Feeling suddenly irritated, he pulled his arm back, and the surrounding crowd froze, dozens of eyes focused on him in complete, deafening silence. They resumed their chattering only after Dom approached and drew him in the awkward sort of a bear hug he reserved for the people he considered family.

"Congratulations," Arthur mumbled disentangling himself from the embrace and stumbling backwards, changing hands holding the box with the present, and choking a cry at the unexpected jolt of pain that pierced through his left arm.

"Come on," Ariadne said somewhere close and attempted to pry the box from Arthur's hands.

"No!" Arthur pleaded and started to back away from the crowd in the direction of the house. The Cobbs stared at him, incredulous. In the silence which again descended over the party, Arthur's ear caught the sound of a burglar alarm going off somewhere inside the residence.

This was when he turned and ran.

xxx

Arthur raced up the stairs towards what he presumed was Mal's study. He entered the room where the level of noise was practically unbearable and paused taking in the surroundings and the degree of damage done.

The study looked suspiciously like one of the rooms in the lab where Dom and Mal worked at Somnus, with the white walls and rows of clean work-tables and glass cabinets, the only difference being the presence of windows in the outer wall. One of said windows was wide open, wind shuffling through the trail of papers on the floor which disappeared in the back of the room. There Arthur saw a small safe box built into the wall behind Mal's desk. The door of the safe stood slightly ajar.

Arthur covered the distance between the entrance and the window in three giant steps. Down below he saw the roof of the porch. The checkered suit was climbing down one of the columns of the veranda. He must have heard something as he raised his head and looked at Arthur, the corners of his eyes momentarily crinkling in a smile. His plump face was red with effort, he breathed heavily and dropped down a dark brown valise which landed on the lawn with a thump. The salesman let go of the column and landed ungracefully next to his piece of luggage, his behind up in the air. He, however, used this position to quickly grab the valise off the ground, and a second later was sprinting down the street, clutching it close to his chest and leaving behind a trail of escaped paper.

At this very moment Arthur was grabbed unceremoniously by the shoulders and shoved away from the window by a couple of what looked like extremely severe security guards. The guards assessed the situation, exchanged a quick look and whirled away in the direction of the stairs. Arthur chose the window. It wasn't easy to climb down the wooden shaft as one of his hands was occupied with the gift box, but if a chubby middle-aged meany had been able pull it off, for Arthur it would be a breeze.

His feet barely touched the steps of the porch as he was almost knocked over by the security guards racing out of the house, one of them getting instructions from a mysterious coordinator over a screechy radio. They had apparently doubled in number and were followed by the worried-looking Cobbs. Mal darted forward, determined, her hands pulling up the long heavy skirt of her dress to get it out of the way. Cobb helped Arthur to his feet and asked if Arthur's leg was okay. And for a second Arthur wondered why Dom was asking about his leg when it was his arm that bothered him. They ran after Mal.

Arthur ran at full force, stubbornly refusing to let go of the white box which by that time had been causing a not inconsiderable discomfort to his left hand. He quickly left Dom behind and overtook Mal and the security guards who were already panting like dogs. The checkered suit had developed a substantial advantage over his pursuers. Arthur barely caught a glimpse of the hideous jacket disappearing behind one of the houses in the street.

"Eames!" Arthur yelled on top his lungs and startled at the name his brain had supplied. Without slowing down, he turned the corner of the house and found himself at the beginning of an enormous lawn that looked like a professional golf course, only there was no chance something like that could be found in the backyard of a house in Magnolia Avenue.

"Eames!" Arthur called again as he saw the checkered figure crouching over the open valise near the bank of an artificial pond at the far end of the field. The salesman's head jerked up but he didn't stop what he was doing. As Arthur came closer he realized that the man was taking pictures of the documents spilling out of his gripsack.

"What is going on?" Arthur asked, stopping a few feet from him and leaning over his hips to catch his breath.

"You and your friends," said the checkered suit, without raising his eyes from the camera, "will need to have a serious talk when you wake up."

The words sounded familiar and made him frown. The salesman shoved aside a pile of papers he'd gone through and continued clicking his camera over the rest of the content. At this moment the guards caught up with them, Dom and Mal in their wake. The clicking of the shutter turned frantic.

"Dom, step aside!" said a familiar voice behind their backs, soft but sure, followed by the screech of a walkie-talkie. It was the voice that had spoken to Cobb from behind the half-closed door of the study, the voice that had been giving directions over the radio, the voice that sounded like someone Arthur had known all his life yet could not recognize.

Slowly, Arthur turned around. Dom did step aside, obedient, and Arthur _saw_.

Moving straight at him was a tall figure, dressed in a jade black suit over a blindingly white shirt. The man approached them stealthily, pulling a familiar-looking handgun out of the thin air. Mal gasped and her hands flew to her mouth, her eyes darting between Arthur and the newcomer. The man quickly glanced over Arthur, as he moved past him, and the bottom of Arthur's stomach dropped. He was taller than Arthur, and older, with a hardened, cold look on his face. Yet, inexplicably, he _was_ Arthur. A strange, sophisticated version of him – too handsome, too built, too machine-like.

Arthur was unable to move. As if in a nightmare, he watched the guards drag the checkered figure away from the valise. One of them knocked the camera out of the man's hands and threw it at the other Arthur, who caught it and quickly looked it over before passing it to Dom. He then looked at Eames – and Arthur knew for sure it was Eames who was kneeling on the freshly mowed grass, held by the two guards - and raised his gun. Arthur's favorite gun.

"Arthur," the checkered suit called and his eyes, terrified and exhilarated, met Arthur's, "look inside the box!" And all of a sudden Arthur remembered the cave, and the sun peeking out from above the branches of a-thousand-year-old trees, and the smile on Eames's face, mocking and shy.

The thunder of the gunshots was covered by the sound of Mal's scream.

The checkered suit fell heavily to his side, a bloodied hole in place of his left eye. The other Arthur dropped the 33 and, looking perplexed, touched his hand to the gunshot wound that appeared in his neck and was spewing out blood in a small but lively fountain. He turned and, scowling like he was trying to solve an especially difficult problem, took a step towards Arthur, who'd lowered his gun, unable to remember how and at what moment he'd shot the other four guards. All he could see, all he could think about was the awkward, funny angle under which Eames's legs had folded as his body hit the ground and the way the reddish brown hair above his forehead was quickly turning scarlet, colored with blood. He neatly side-stepped his double whose legs buckled, sending him face down into the grass, next to the shreds of the gift box which Arthur had ripped to take out his Glock.

Arthur turned around and stared at Dom who stood there, pale and wild-eyed, his shaking hand caressing Mal's hair as she cried, inconsolably, on his chest. The 33 felt heavy in Arthur's hand, its magazine still half-full. It was then that Arthur knew exactly what he had to do. He could never in his life turn a gun on Dom or Mal, even if it had been a necessity. So he brought the Glock to his own head and said the only thing he knew he had to tell them before pulling the trigger.

"Get back to reality."


	7. Chapter 7 Everloving

Arthur's feet were bare and wet. He looked down and saw he was standing up to his ankles in bathtub-warm water. The tide crashed against his calves, and the water momentarily went white as the disturbed layers of fine sand rose to the surface.

In front of him was an endless plain of the ocean which started off milky blue at the shore, turned turquoise a few hundred yards further into the open sea, and went almost violet near the line of the horizon where it merged with the gray, solemn sky. The air was ionized, heavy with the promise of rain.

Arthur, naked apart from a pair of black briefs, found himself on the very edge of a crescent-shaped reef composed of perfect ivory sand. Behind his back towered the mass of an island, separated from the dune by a narrow azure strip of water. The island began as an all-sand beach, with a couple of giant palms, leaning low over the water. The beach ended at the foot of an imposing hill, jutted with stones, covered with low open shrub. Far on top of it, the gray column of a lighthouse was sending its flickering light across the darkening sky.

Arthur stared at two black fishermen navigating a tiny dingy towards the shore through the rising waves; he took in the color of the rain clouds that were gathering above the atoll, pondered over the fact that there wasn't a single pebble under his feet, marveled at the angle at which the palms were leaning towards the ground. _East Africa_, he concluded, _the Indian Ocean_.

He probably had to go ashore, find some kind of a settlement, find out where exactly he was.

"Clever boy," said a familiar voice behind his back, and a second later Arthur's world went dark.

xxx

The first thing Arthur saw when he opened his eyes was the sky above his head – an uneven patch of light in the black ceiling of the cave. For a minute, he just lay there and stared at it in silence, absorbing the stillness and calm it held, following the slow progress of a lonely cloud crossing the surface.

He felt Eames stir next to him and let go of Arthur's wrist. The guide sat up and reached for his flask, took a sip. Arthur carefully skimmed over the bandage on his left arm – still in place. His body felt no different from when he'd gone into the dream: his head was clear, his limbs hadn't even fallen asleep. He stuffed his hand into the pocket of his hoodie and took out the container with the bullet – Jerry's farewell gift.

"Four minutes," Eames mumbled, having checked the time on his watch, and leveled himself off the ground with a weary 'ooff'. Arthur frowned and rubbed at his hand where Eames's fingers had been holding him.

The walls of the cave were back in place, the hole above their heads being the only source of light, and the rumbling of the waterfalls no more than a distant echo behind the mass of rock. The Cobbs and Mercedes hadn't moved, still fast asleep.

"Well, that was surreal," Arthur said, getting up and stretching his shoulders. He remembered the dream very vaguely, in short flashes: Father Coriolano, holding some sort of a ceremony; the annoying, raucous voice of a French singer; and Mal, crying on Dom's shoulder. Strangely enough, he wasn't worried about the Cobbs anymore, as if he knew they were out of danger.

Eames's reply was an unintelligible mumble. He bent over his backpack, preoccupied, searching for something at the bottom. His movements were jerky. The familiar lazy slouch of his shoulders was gone. He looked tense, hyper-aware, like a man expecting to be attacked at any moment. Finally, he found what he'd been looking for and sat down on the ground, leaning against the wall, outside of the circle of light. A lighter clicked in the dark, illuminating Eames's face, shuttered and worn, and the smell of weed filled the cavern.

"Arthur, listen," Eames said after a moment. "I have to go. Now. My friend called while we were at the Garths'. He's done in Caracas. He's coming to pick me up. I can't stay and wait for the Cobbs. I'll ask Etewa to wait for you on the path. When Dom wakes up, and you're ready to leave, go to Jerry's. Do you understand? Don't go back to the village."

Arthur pulled at the collar of his undershirt as a wave of hit suddenly washed over him. It dawned on him that they were the only two people awake in the cave. The shapori was nowhere to be seen, and nor was the makeshift bed that had been set on top of Arasuwe's trunk. The trunk itself had been pushed further into the depth of the cavern.

_"Hello, white thief!" an Indian chief had exclaimed once, it seemed ages ago, and had offered to play a game of dice as he would have accepted no money from Eames in repayment for what had been stolen from him. "We had a breakthrough," Dom had said to Arthur in a half-forgotten dream and later had toasted to their success. "Look inside the box!" had pleaded a man in a horrible checkered suit, and the gun had fired in Arthur's hand, sending blood and crushed bone into the air_.

He didn't remember how he rose to his feet and crossed the distance between them. He grabbed Eames by the hand and pulled him into the light.

He needed to see, _he had to make sure_.

Eames went with him, unresisting. He didn't argue when Arthur's hand cupped his face, submitting to the inspection without a word of protest.

Dark gray eyes, almost violet in the light coming from above, looking away from Arthur, elusive. Ginger eyebrows on the tanned face, bleached by the sun; the wide slope of Eames's nose, covered with pale freckles; Eames's lips, hidden by the beard, always looking like they were about to form a smile... Unscathed, breathing, alive. Arthur probably had to beg forgiveness, ask if Eames understood that it hadn't been him who'd pulled the trigger, try and explain that he would never hurt Eames, because...

It was only when Eames's heavy hands came to rest on his back, and his lips nearly brushed Arthur's fingers as he said, "Easy. Easy there. I'm alright. I'm fine," that Arthur came to realize that he was straddling Eames, having pushed him supine on the wet rocks. He was holding Eames flush to his chest, one of his hands twisting the fabric on the back of Eames's top. Arthur's fingers were splayed over the soft skin where the shade of Eames's eyelashes lay in a matte semi-circle, his thumb trembling over Eames's lips, almost there, but not quite daring to touch.

Eames fell silent. His eyes were huge, confused, disbelieving; they followed the movement of Arthur's fingers on his face, then looked at Arthur, very close, very deep. The confusion was gone, replaced with warmth and sadness. Arthur wished with an intensity that surprised him this anguish to be gone. He allowed himself not to think, once, just to do what he really wanted. He leaned in and let his lips brush where his fingers had just rested, below Eames's eyes, over the bridge of his nose, in the corner of Eames's mouth, chastely. _Not a kiss_, he told himself,_not even strictly a touch_.

Eames kept his eyes down, quiet, almost docile, giving up control. _This is right_, Arthur realized with a finality, _this is how it should be_. Eames's hand moved on his back, pushing him closer, so that Arthur lay on top of him, their bodies touching head to toe. This was the closest Arthur had ever been to another man. He could feel the rhythm of Eames's heart, already familiar, rapid and strong, the slight pressure of Eames's palm on the back of his neck, encouraging. Eames turned his head and his breath warmed Arthur's jaw; his thighs parted, bracketing Arthur's body, making them touch in a point where they both were growing hard, inexorably. Eames's lips and the coarse hair of his beard brushed against Arthur's cheekbone, his legs crossed over the small of Arthur's back, and he thrust up, grinding against Arthur's hips, as if worrying an overstrung chord that Arthur didn't know was there, teasing a half-choked cry of pleasure and pain out of Arthur's body.

Arthur couldn't fight himself anymore. There was this part of him, terrified and gleeful, that wanted to give back, to pull Eames's hair, and rut against him, making him swear and gasp, making him feel the same way Arthur had just felt – like a raw wound, open, vulnerable. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head. Their lips brushed. Again and again. Arthur lost count. Finally, Eames's palms – wide and soft, beautiful, heavy bones – came to rest in Arthur's hair, keeping him still. And Eames surged up, kissing him, open-mouthed and noisy, a big, powerful body, shuddering below Arthur. Because of Arthur.

He forgot about Dom, about the shaman, about the need to report to Cobol as soon as he was back in Los Angeles. Arthur forgot about the dull ache in his arm, and the fact that he had never even considered touching another man. He was kissing Eames back, a feather-light touch. He couldn't give it all at once, he had to keep Eames wanting, secure the last vestiges of control. He felt calm and powerful, because he had Eames. Arthur had him all to himself.

Eames sat up suddenly, with a frustrated groan, pulling Arthur up, making him sit in his lap. Arthur opened his eyes and saw Eames stare at him from below. It was a heated look – half discontent, half mischief, recognizing the upper hand Arthur held in this thing they had, but at the same time mocking him, and mocking himself. _Wrong_, Arthur thought. _Wrong answer_. He rolled his hips experimentally, making them both gasp, and smiled, satisfied with the way Eames closed his eyes, as if unable to cope with the visual, and his lips parted in a sigh, soft and helpless.

He bent down and kissed Eames again, generous, not holding anything back, and taking what was now his. Eames's hand pulled at the belt of Arthur's pants, impatient, making all blood in Arthur's body rush low with the thought, _there_, and went still. Eames's fingers lingered on the buckle of Arthur's belt. He didn't remove his hand, but his whole body went motionless. Then he neatly broke the kiss and turned his face away. Disengaged.

Arthur stared at Eames's profile, at his forehead, creased in a frown, at his gray eyes that were looking through objects, as if Eames's mind was working again, concentrating over a problem. Eames seemed mystified, as if he were trying to figure how he had come to find himself in such a strange situation. The astonishment didn't last long, giving way to anger. Eames bit at his lower lip, glaring at an invisible opponent, like a caged animal, defiant, realization dawning on him, followed by a deep, heart-wrenching sorrow. Eames closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His face stilled. _Acceptance_, Arthur thought. _The final stage, right there. But why?_

Eames opened his eyes and smoothed the invisible wrinkles on the front of his top, his expression calm, almost businesslike. Arthur had an impression that he was witnessing some sort of a mechanism come into action. The hatches were being battened, one by one, cutting off the feed to the vessel that was Eames's mind.

Eames's hand patted at Arthur's side, prompting him to let go. Arthur drew back, feeling like he'd just snapped out of a daydream. He felt left-out and clueless, as if the rules of the Universe had suddenly changed, and heaven and earth switched places. Also inappropriate, as if he'd been forcing himself on Eames which he knew he hadn't. And like a complete tool, sitting there and staring, while Eames's eyes were looking everywhere except Arthur's face.

"What is it all about?" Arthur asked slowly, when he felt he could trust his own voice.

Eames scraped his eyes with the heel of his palm, his expression distant. Now that Arthur was able to pay attention, he realized that Eames looked exhausted, – exhausted and _defeated_, as if he had been dealt a blow he couldn't overcome.

"Listen, Arthur," he began drily. "It's about you being a good friend and me doing my job. Now that my job's done, I've got to go. And you, being the good friend that you are, have got to stay and wait for the Cobbs. They'll get here soon."

"We'll all go when Mal and Dom wake up," Arthur said, trying to sound calm. He reached out, tentatively, touching Eames's lips again, telling himself that he's allowed. "If something is wrong, tell me now, and we'll figure out what to do."

Eames pulled away from the touch, emotionless.

Arthur got up and stepped back, putting some distance between them. What was he even thinking? Who was Eames after all? Had he specifically stated he welcomed Arthur's attention or his help? The thought: _rejected, you stupid fuck, you're being rejected_, rushed through his mind. He quelled it before it took over his composure. He absolutely had to look casual, not to let the grimace of humiliation and hurt show on his face.

"No time for tales," Eames said. "You've got money?"

"Yes," Arthur said, perplexed.

"Good. When you get to Jerry's, let the Cobbs go back to Caracas. Jerry has a boat, he can take them to Cuidad Bolivar. They can drive from there. This is Cobb's war, not yours. Leave them to it. Etewa always needs money. If you ask, he'll gladly take you to Puerto Carreno, on the Brazilian side. I know a guy there, he could fly you to Villavicencio without asking questions." Eames reached for his backpack, took out a small map and a pen. He scribbled something on the back of the map and handed it to Arthur. Names, phone numbers. "In Villavicencio," he continued, "there's a man who owes me. He will help you get back in the US."

"I don't-" Arthur froze, trying to process everything Eames was throwing at him.

"You don't understand," Eames interrupted, and the cold contempt Arthur overheard in his words made him shiver. "After what I've seen down there," he gestured at Dom and Mal still fast asleep on the rocks near them, "the Cobbs are _assets_, you are a _liability_."

"Eames, are you high?" Arthur asked, taken aback. "Cobb's _war? Assets?_"

Eames, who was still sitting on the ground with his hair in disarray and a wet patch on the front of his pants, stared at him as one would stare at a bug, half contemplative, half indifferent. "Alright, Arthur," he said in a voice that was completely blank. "I just want you to know there's nothing personal. I've got to finish my job here. You of all people should understand..." Arthur panicked. Too much information, too fast.

While he was fighting to determine the connection between cause and effect, Eames got up and straightened his clothes. He took the blue bandana off his neck and stuffed it into his backpack, which he then put back on.

Suddenly, Arthur wanted to hold him, naively, stupidly, to reestablish the connection that had been lost between them.

"Eames, come on," he said and stepped closer, holding out his hand, which was cold and shaking slightly. "Dom and Mal will come awake and we'll all get back to the village."

For a second, Eames stared at the proffered hand, his eyes empty. Then he turned and walked away.  
Arthur watched in disbelief as he pulled a nylon drawstring bag from a dark corner of the cavern and hanged it on his right shoulder.

Arthur thought of the open safe in Mal's dream, of the shapori's trunk hidden in the shadows of the cavern, and of the nylon bag, stuffed to the point it looked like it was about to crack under the strain.  
In a split second, he was at the entrance of the cavern, barring Eames's way.

Eames halted in his steps. He stared at Arthur, his eyes cold, assessing.

"You're going to try and stop me?" he asked, completely composed.

Arthur said nothing. It dawned on him that the Glock had disappeared, also empty was the holster that had been holding his machete.

"Arthur, listen," Eames continued, having realized there would be no answer. "I don't want anybody to get hurt. You especially." His face was still, his words contained no bite, as if he couldn't care less whether Arthur was going to confront him or not. "Can you please move out of the way?"

_"It's not the size of the dog in the fight," Arthur Lau would yell, exasperated, when teaching his grandson the basics of throwing a good punch, "it's the size of the fight in the dog! There, I'll put it simply, for your American brain to understand. You might be short, you might be fat – that doesn't need to matter. Knowing that you're right makes you stronger in a fight where the opponent is your equal. It gives you an advantage when your opponent is stronger than you. Never be scared of someone who's bigger, look for their weak points." However elementary, the speech never failed to work. The little Arthur would scoff at his grandfather for quoting Mark Twain, wipe the angry tears off his face and take position for another round._

_What is it going to be?_ Arthur asked himself, facing Eames in the dark cave. _The SW? The knife? Or the machete?_ At that moment he had no doubt that Eames was going to fight him. He was going to use one of his weapons, maybe even Arthur's own. A convenient solution to the problem.

Instinctively, Arthur knew he had to let go. He'd already lost. His opponent had the firepower advantage, and, most importantly, knew Arthur's weak points – the arm, the knee. However, the stubborn, naïve child inside him refused to admit defeat. Arthur's memory of the dream was surreal at best, but also inspiring, exhilarating. His mind kept coming back to the new possibilities the shapori's drug could open for all of them, when brought into the world. He wanted to help Dom and Mal bring their project to fruition, he wanted to be part of something bigger, he wanted recognition. And most of all, he wanted to make Eames pay. For the indifference, for the distant look in his eyes, for making Arthur believe, for leaving him with this open wound he was unable to take care of.

"You've taken things from Mal, from the shaman," he stated, looking Eames in the eyes, determined. "I can't just let you leave." It was as simple as that. Arthur was the only one there to confront the traitor, and he wouldn't back down, no matter how slim his chances were. If that was the way it was going to be between Arthur and Eames, then so be it.

The nylon bag dropped to the ground, followed by Eames's backpack and holster. No weapons then. It made things easier, gave Arthur a chance at winning some time.

"You're not backing off, are you?" Eames said, and his face twitched. _Enraged,_ Arthur realized. _He is enraged. I'm nothing to him, just a small hitch that he needs to eliminate in order to proceed as planned._ He watched Eames scratch the back of his head and sigh, as if giving in to Arthur's persuasion. _Now,_ Arthur told himself, and this was when Eames lunged forward.

Who was Eames as known to Arthur? A lazy, good-natured, romantically-inclined junkie who happened to know the forest and be in need of money. "There are many white men who know the jungle," Father Coriolano had told them, hadn't he? An ex-soldier, probably a deserter, someone a bit unreliable, but too uncomplicated to be considered a potential threat. Eames looked fat, mushy. He walked hunching forward and talked to himself where others could hear him. This Eames had run from his employer, unable to cope with the pressure; he'd been afraid of the close combat and held a soft spot for Arthur.

The Eames Father Coriolano knew was probably a lost soul. A sinner with a kind heart, who'd been found in the jungle, been treated by the church infirmary, gotten back to life and repented, becoming one of Coriolano's parishioners.

Anjelica's Eames was the prodigal son. The loner without a family, someone in need of refuge, who, just like her, had lost everything and been brought ashore by the tide of life. There was probably Etewa's Eames, a good friend, a reliable ally in the dangerous labyrinth of the jungle, and Cobb's Eames – someone who'd also loved a woman he'd been unable to save from herself, be it a sister or a wife.

None of them was the man who blocked Arthur's hook, lighting fast, sledgehammered him in the ribs, precise and measured, not deadly enough to cause real harm, but strong enough to make a point, thrashed Arthur against the wall, so that his field of vision exploded in white spots and the world around went slow and woozy. This stranger punched Arthur in the left arm, right in the healing wound, and when Arthur cried out in pain and managed to get him with a low hook, he grunted and struck Arthur, mercifully, in the face, avoiding his nose and eyes, and almost knocking him out with the sheer power of it. As Arthur's feet buckled and a wave of sickness rose up his throat, smothering him, the stranger lowered him to the ground, making him sit against the wall.

"You could try and follow me when you're back to your senses," the man said, putting his backpack back on and hanging the nylon bag on top of it. A stain of fresh blood, bright red, was growing on the front of his top where the stitches in the wound on his stomach had just come open. Eames didn't seem to notice. He moved easily, his breathing even. He hadn't even broken a sweat. "It won't be long, darling, give it another five minutes. I'll leave the Glock and your machete with Etewa. He'll give them back to you. But if I were you, I wouldn't move until tomorrow."

He paused for a minute, his gaze turned inwards, as if mulling over some thought. Arthur waited, taking in the changes and committing them to memory, creating a new, truthful idea of Eames in his mind: a very strong man, deceptively soft; a body built to endure and fight, broad-shouldered when not hunching, extremely mobile; quick reactions, trained to predict and intercept; a mercurial temper, rarely displayed; a sharp mind, always analyzing, imaginative and subtle; a cold, dry wit. Withdrawn, patient, self-sufficient. The manipulator. An independent agent, a thief, a liar.

"I'm gonna kill you," Arthur coughed out, not trying to impress, just making his intention known.

Eames looked at him, an amused, mean glint his eyes, as if challenging Arthur, taking him on. "It's a shame really. Because I like you, I do," he said and gave an angry, close-lipped twitch of a smile. "Well, if you manage to get out of it alive and decide to settle the score one day, I'll be waiting." He stepped over Arthur's feet and started climbing up the short stairs, leading to the entrance of the cave.

"Say hello from me to Mr. and Mrs. Cobb," he called, before disappearing in the dark.


	8. Chapter 8 Natural Blues

xxx

Rain clouds gathered above the island in the Indian Ocean like a premonition. The tide crashed angrily against Arthur's feet, and the seagulls lamented in the gray sky, calling for a storm. Mal took Arthur by the hand and led him towards the arriving waves.

"This is unhealthy, we've got to awake him up," a voice said in French somewhere close, hoarse and tired, and a small, hard palm covered Arthur's forehead.

"I'm awake," Arthur tried to say, but his throat was parched and no sound came out.

He patted Mal's hand and sat up, opening his eyes. His arm hurt, and he could feel without touching that his bandages were wet, soaked in blood. His eyelids felt like they'd been scraped raw. He looked at the dark walls of the cave, at the small camp fire burning under the hole in the ceiling, touched his hand to the blanket that had been wrapped lovingly around his shoulders. He realized he'd been lying, God only knew how long, on Mercedes's throw, patterned with flowers, and his head had been resting on Mal's shoulder.

"Don't try to talk," Dom ordered and handed him a beat tin cup with water. Dom and Mal were sitting on both sides of Arthur, bracketing his body, keeping him warm.

"What time is it?" he croaked, having emptied the cup. Mal hugged him, forcing him to move closer. Her body felt frail, almost weightless. Arthur had to lean against the floor for leverage, otherwise he would have fallen on her, carried by the momentum. He was afraid he would crush her and break her bones. Mal's hair was wet, as if half-dried after a bath. She smelled slightly shower gel.

"Midnight," Dom replied and pointed at the round face of the Moon that was spying on them from the opening above their heads. He opened a small thermos and poured some piss-colored liquid into the cup Arthur had placed on the ground, letting some steam escape into the air.

"When did you wake up?" Arthur drank the weak, sweet tea.

"At four in the afternoon," Dom replied and moved the coals in the fire with a burned twig. "It took us a while."

"You were passed out, we decided to let you sleep it off," Mal said and coughed, a deep, whooping sound, magnified by the walls of the cave. "It was already getting dark," she continued, having fought the fit, "and I had to remember how to walk again." She smiled at him, apologetic, her eyes a perfect blue in the stream of moonlight, two shiny gems on her gaunt, morbid-white face.

Dom got up and went deeper into the cave. There, resting against the shaman's trunk, stood Mal's backpack, dirty and wet, it looked as if it had been stored in a cellar, and next to it – a small woven bag, resembling the ones Arthur had seen Indian women carry around Barlovento. Near the bags lay a pile of old rags. Dom took a piece of cloth from the top of it and returned to the camp fire. He sat down next to Mal and covered her shoulders with what looked like a tribal throw, a sophisticated weave of red and black strips of fabric and leather, decorated with fresh-water pearls and feathers. Mal let go of Arthur, with a sigh, and lay down, putting her head in Dom's lap.

Arthur looked back at the woven bag and frowned.

"Where's Mercedes?" he asked quietly, when Mal had stopped fidgeting. Dom shook his head, and when Arthur raised his eyebrows, questioning, pointed at the trunk.

Arthur got up to his feet, unsteady, and approached the shapori's chest. There he saw that what he had mistaken for a pile of rags was in reality a dead body, lying on the bare floor, covered with a few blankets, similar to the one Dom had thrown on Mal's shoulders.

Arthur lifted the covers and stepped aside to let the light from the fire illuminate the body. The face of the corpse was calm, the curer's clothes looked untouched, her arms were clean, no broken nails, no traces of a fight. There were no wounds on the woman's body, as far as Arthur was concerned.

"Didn't come awake," Dom said behind him. "She decided to wait out until the last dose wears off. We expected here to be back a few hours ago." He looked down at his hands. "Didn't happen. I guess we could say at this point she's dead."

Arthur lowered the covers back on the body and was going to return to his spot by the fire when something caught his attention. There was a black stain on the lid of the trunk, a mark left by a bloodied hand.

He looked at Dom who stared back at him, pale and scared. "Arthur, don't," he began, but Arthur already pushed the heavy lid to the side.

The spacious chest looked virtually empty, only on the bottom of it, buried under strips of bark and shredded cloth – the remains of his bed, lay the body of the old shaman, a neat hole of a bullet wound right in the middle of his ribcage. _Eames_, the thought flashed in Arthur's mind. He peered closer, trying, against odds, to figure out the caliber of the gun. And then he _saw_.

Arasuwe was buried in a pile of money. Literally. Arthur recognized the green of American dollars, stacked neatly on the bottom of the trunk, the yellow and purple of Venezuelan bolivares, the ring of stars on the front of euros. There were some bills he'd never seen before, and coins, jewelry, flashes of gold and silver, sparkling of precious stones – all of it wrapped securely in layers of transparent plastic.

"He was the most authentic drug-dealer one could possibly cross paths with," Dom said behind Arthur's back. He'd left Mal by the fire and now stood close to Arthur, contemplating the dream-like picture that lay in front of them. "Mal said he'd had a group of Germans here, right before them. They had stayed two weeks until they went dry. Two weeks of dreaming, four to six hours every day. Can you imagine that?"

Arthur couldn't.

_I fell asleep_, he thought. _Eames had to work fast. Shot the shaman, the body fell off the trunk. Quick. Pushed the lid, emptied the chest, took everything important, the epena, probably the ingredients. Didn't touch the money. The drug money, the money of someone he despised. Dumped the body and the old man's bed into the chest, cleaned up. Took my weapons, hid the bags in the corner. Got ready to take off. Took the drug, joined me in the dream, emptied the safe in Mal's study. Just like Iramowawe had predicted, he stole from her mind._

xxx

They left the old woman in the cave. Mal put fresh bandages on Arthur's arm, they gathered the few belongings they had left and moved out just before the noon. Neither of the Cobbs had asked about what had happened to Eames.

In silence, they crossed the plateau above the crater and entered the crack leading outside of the mountain. They moved slowly - because of Mal, who was still too weak after days and days of dreaming, and Arthur, who felt like he was about to develop a fever again.

The first thing Arthur saw when he emerged on the small clearing where Etewa was supposed to be meeting them, was the body of an Indian warrior, lying face down in the stream; one of his arms, stretched out in the fall, rested in the white ash marking the beginning of the forbidden land.

Arthur quickly drew back and shushed the questions, trying to scan as much of the territory as was possible from his position in the opening in the steep wall. Soon he noticed another body, this one shot in the back, as if the warrior had been trying to escape by running up the rocky hill.

They waited for half an hour. The jungle around the mountain carried on with its daily hubbub, the shrieks of the birds blending with the quiet murmur of the stream. Nothing moved in the clearing, nor on top of the hill. Finally, Arthur decided they'd waited enough. He took off his bag and stepped into the open. Trying to make as little noise as possible, careful with every step, he climbed up the slope and spent some time observing the forest below. The path looked clear.

Both bodies had been stripped clean of their weapons. The good news was neither of the dead men were Etewa, but he was still missing, and so were Arthur's gun and machete. Provided Eames had ever had a chance of giving them to him. That left them with a dilemma: they could continue into the forest, but they were clueless as to which direction to take and had no arms to protect themselves in case of danger.

They were in the process of finding a signal on their cell phones, when someone coughed softly behind their backs.

They spun around, ready for an attack, and saw a corpulent figure in a black t-shirt separate itself from the trunk of an ancient tree a few feet away from the entrance to Ashembo. Arthur took in the oily dark hair, the massive white hands clutching a PSP, the stained khaki shorts which looked like they were about to break at the seams.

"Jerry?" he asked, staring at Jeremy Garth Jr. in disbelief. "What are you doing here? Where's Etewa?"

"Uh..." Junior stuffed the game in a dusty string bag. "He left. To fight." And he crossed the shallow stream and followed them from the sacred land. "Yesterday night there was a massacre. Marikitare went crazy, said some whites from Barlovento had killed their chief." He looked at them, his expression hard, condemning. "They razed the village to the ground, killed Father Coriolano. This is pretty fucked up. Yanomami are gathering men from all villages, there's going to be a war. A real one."

"Where are your parents?" Arthur asked, perplexed.

"Dad had a heart attack yesterday, after the news broke." Junior blinked, suddenly looking like he was about to cry. "He's going to be okay, though. Eames and his friend flew him and Mom to Ciudad Bolivar. He's in the hospital. Mom told me to come meet you here, since nobody else could make it. She told me to take you to the town. We'll go by boat." He paused and gave them an uncertain look. "Don't worry, I know how to drive it."

"Wait," Cobb said, frowning. "Are you here all by yourself?"

"Yes." The boy shrugged. "Someone had to come for you, right?"

"Eames's friend flew them to town?" Arthur echoed, processing what he'd just heard.

"Yeah, the one with the kinky fro. The British guy." And the boy raised his hand to the top of his head in a vaguely familiar gesture, imitating the mock crown. "He actually came with a pilot, on an amphibian. They landed right on the water. It was very handy."

Mal froze at these words, her lips white, her fingers squeezing Dom's hand.

"On a Cessna?" Cobb breathed out and pinched at the bridge of his nose.

"Yusuf, was it?" Mal asked and lowered herself on a fallen log, as if unable to stay on her feet.

"Oh," the boy looked at her, "you know him? He's cool, promised to take me to Caracas next time he's here. Only I think it's not going to happen, with the war thing and Eames leaving the country."

"What was that about Eames leaving?" Cobb looked up, intrigued.

"How can you be sure of that?" Arthur asked, stubbornly, even though it was an obvious development of the situation.

"Because Eames shaved," Junior replied and began climbing up the rocky hill.

The three of them stayed there for a minute, following the movement of the meaty behind, as the boy advanced further and further up the slope. Having reached the top, he turned around and said, "We've got to hurry up. I took out these two," and he gestured at the dead warriors, "but there could be another patrol at any minute."

"Yusuf," Mal whispered, as if snapping out of a trance, "this little cunt worked with me in the lab all this time. Dom, they've taken everything. Don't you understand?" And then she cried, quiet and helpless.

"Come on," Cobb said, his expression hard, "we've got to move." And he took her by the forearm, forcing her up from the log.

This was when Arthur stopped listening and followed Junior up the hill.

"Did you have to kill both of them?" he asked, pausing to catch his breath on the top.

The boy shot him a guilty look. "They saw me, they would go to the village and come back with more warriors. It was us or them. I had to make a decision." He stopped abruptly. "Oh, and by the way." He reached for his bag and took out Arthur's gun and machete, wrapped in an oily piece of cloth. "There are only eight rounds left in it now."

Arthur checked and holstered his weapons, feeling reassured by the familiar weight of the Glock. Eight rounds and a machete wasn't that much, but their chances of getting out of the jungle alive had definitely gone up.

xxx

Two hours into the forest they made a stop to let Mal rest. While she and Dom argued in frantic whisper whether they had to call Cobol as soon as they got to Caracas or wait until Los-Angeles, Arthur cornered Jerry who'd settled down on the roots of a giant tree, hiding behind his PSP as if afraid of hearing more questions.

"A Cessna has four seats," Arthur said, squatting next to the boy.

Shifty black eyes looked at him from behind the game. "And?"

"They couldn't all go at once," Arthur pressed on.

"Mom and Dad went first," Junior replied with a shrug. "It's a short flight."

"Eames and Yusuf?"

"He picked them up after dark."

_After the sunset_, Arthur thought. There was hope Eames could still be in the country.

"They talked, didn't they. While they waited," Arthur stated. "Jerry, you're a smart kid. I'm sure you've got something to tell me."

Junior wrinkled his nose and then closed his PSP, decisive.

"It's only because Dad told me to help you out," he said and got up to his feet. Puzzled, Arthur watched the boy stretch his legs and shake his arms in the air. Junior mussed his hair and lifted his shoulders to make his neck look shorter. His lips folded into a soppy smile and his eyes turned into two sly, black slits.

Arthur noticed that both Mal and Dom fell silent and followed the metamorphosis happening in front of them with rapt attention.

Junior took a few small, hurried steps and stopped right in front of Arthur, staring down at him, an upset, worried look in his eyes.

"My friend, don't be so sour. This is not a good look on you," said the soppy smile, and Arthur realized that it wasn't him that the boy was addressing.

Junior hunched his shoulders slightly. His face shifted into a frown as he glared sullenly at some point above Arthur's head.

"I'd love to see the look on your face, if you had to take a bullet to the head," muttered this new character, biting at the nail of his thumb, and Arthur recognized the sand and gravel of Eames's voice.

"Judging by the fact that we're having this conversation here, that bullet wasn't that real, was it?" replied the soppy smile.

"I still can't believe I've been traipsing around the jungle for six months in a row, because you couldn't figure out one simple formula..." 'Eames' shook his head.

"You know perfectly well that she changed the cipher her notes every day. That slows the bloody work down!" 'Yusuf' tried, looking genuinely hurt.

"...to the point where I had to go and fucking _extract..._" continued the hunched shoulders, sounding more and more irked with every passing second.

"Careful, luvvie." There was a dangerous flash in the sly eyes. "You have no idea what you're talking about. That formula was the most-" He tsked and waggled his finger, as if catching himself.

"...I brought you the powder, the fucking ingredients – everything. You were in her blessed lab... While she'd been able to do it in a cave, with no equipment..." 'Eames' went on, his look turned inwards, as if he were talking to himself.

"_Not everybody is a bloody genius!_" 'Yusuf' yelled, his hands uplifted, as if summoning the heavens to be his witness. He fell silent, chagrined by his own outburst. There was a pause.

"Already worked up about messing with my brain again? Hmm, Usuf?" said the sullen face, suddenly lighting up with humor.

'Yusuf' gaped. "And there I was," he said slowly, with a sense of gruff relief, "thinking that we were past your trolling phase."

"In all honesty," sighed the hunched shoulders, "sometimes I hate this work so much, I just don't wanna do it anymore."

"I think you could ask for a transfer when we're done here," suggested the soppy smile after a bit. "Pick somewhere quiet. Europe maybe? The Art Squad is bleeding personnel, as usual. Nobody wants to risk their neck, looking for a painting stolen from Lord So-and-So who probably still has a hundred more of them on the walls of his estate. And the money is small, compared to drug enforcement. I thought you were quixotic enough to like that."

"Christ," 'Eames' muttered and rolled his eyes. "It's things like that that make me want to go back to Valle del Cauca." He rubbed at his cheek, considering. "Plus, with my good luck, I'll probably end up in the Balkans."

"Point." 'Yususf' smiled, suddenly enthusiastic. "In that case, you'll be pushing the highest quality produce out there, brother. I'll make sure of it."

"You're not being awfully helpful, d'you know that?" snorted the hunched shoulders, relaxing.

"Well, as you Christians like to say, we all have our own cross to bear. I'd say, yours is deception, drugs and - pardon my love for the poetics – fighting evil with evil."

"What about yours, then?"

"As a Muslim? I'd say, I have no cross to bear. But as your friend, I believe I've been taking quite a bit of weight off your shoulders these past few years. Do you agree?"

"And adding some, at times," 'Eames' replied with a brief smile.

'Yusuf' shrugged, unabashed. "Which would only be fair. Because we are in this together."

There was another charged pause.

"This latest drug, it scares me," 'Eames' said, staring at the ground. "You won't believe the things it allows you to perform in the dream space."

"We still have test runs to perform, mind. I feel a bit sorry that she won't be able to... She had a truly beautiful mind." 'Yusuf' sighed, took imaginary glasses off his nose and began cleaning them with the hem of his shirt.

"Who knows. Maybe she will," supplied the sullen face and smirked.

'Yusuf' squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep, calming breath. "Well," he said slowly, his voice light with fury, "in this case, I believe Dr. Cobb will be joining us as well, won't he?"

"Probably," answered the hunched shoulders and shrugged.

"So you made an executive decision?" 'Yusuf's lips stretched into a forced smile. "You're what, the chief of operations now? You issue your own directives?"

"And Mr. Levine is coming to get even," added 'Eames' with a chuckle, as if it were the funniest thing he had ever said. "He swore he'd make a point of that."

"Bollocks," muttered the forced smile. "Forget what I said about Europe. You're getting suspended for fuck knows how long."

"It didn't seem necessary," 'Eames' continued. "They're not posing a threat. On the contrary. If we play them right..."

"You think they could be recruited?" 'Yusuf' frowned, considering.

"Why not? They're fanatical about their job. Scare them. Then offer them their lab back, the resources, and they will follow you wherever you take them. It's not even about the money: they want to change the world."

"Right. I understand the Cobbs could be useful. But how does Cobol's Chief of Security fit in the picture?"

"Not my problem anymore," 'Eames' shook his head. "I've dirtied my hands enough here. They want him gone, they'll have to find someone else for the job. I just want to wash it all out, like a nightmare."

"Listen, my friend," 'Yusuf' enunciated, the look in his eyes going sharp, intense. "The deed is done. Quit being sorry for yourself and start thinking. We're in a bit of a tight situation here, thanks to your misguided decision-making."

Junior smoothed his hair back in place.

"This is it," he said simply. "At this point they decided to talk business and told me to fuck off and quit eavesdropping. I figured I'd rather show it to you than try and retell, cause most of it doesn't make any sense."

"Putain," Mal mumbled. She and Dom both stared at Junior with almost a scientific interest, as if he'd been some sort of a sideshow freak.

"Nobody takes you seriously when you're seventeen and overweight," Jerry said and wiped his nose. He was covered in sweat, like he'd just run a few miles.

"What happened next?" Arthur asked, still dazed.

"Like I said, the Cessna came back, and they left." Junior sat down on the root next to Arthur and took a packet of tissues out of his bag. "I waited till before the sunrise, and then I went for you," he continued, wiping his face and neck.

"Arthur," Dom whispered from where he was sitting under the spreading branches, his lips trembling. "We are _not_ developing recreational drugs. I swear on my kids' lives."

xxx

About a mile south of the Garths' residence they saw the bodies. Arthur counted seventeen. Marikitare in full tribal wear, the soot-covered faces, bared machetes, quivers and arrows, spears, decorated with white feathers.

They hid in the underbrush and waited for an hour. Jerry was the first one to leave the cover and start down the path leading to the cliff. Having realized that they weren't following, he spun around and whispered, exasperated. "Come on! It's clear, don't you see?"

Dom narrowed his eyes at the boy, suspicious. Arthur wondered if he and Cobb were thinking the same thing.

Junior's jaw dropped, his eyes darted from Dom's face to Arthur's and then to Mal's. "What?! It wasn't me, I swear!" His lips trembled. "They were already here in the morning!"

Arthur stopped briefly to examine the dead. Thirteen warriors were shot, four of them at close range – no more than a foot or two. Arthur concluded. _No thumb safety, fast to reload. Convenient. 10 rounds in a magazine_. Number fourteen's skull was cracked. Number fifteen was lying on blood-soaked soil, an askew cut left in his throat by an army knife. The two Marikitare lying further up the path both had simple wooden arrows sticking out of their backs.

It all played out in front of his eyes as part of a familiar script. _Eames was walking. He thought. Probably running. Rushing forward, because Attal had already been waiting at Jerry's. Noticed the warriors when it was too late. Too close. They'd been patrolling, looking for 'the white thief'. He didn't risk dropping the bags down – the cargo was too precious. Shot nine from a distance. One of the rounds had been used on the shaman. Still too little time left after reloading, plus the numerical advantage – they were already closing in on him. Only managed to shoot another four before entering the close combat. Used the machete on number fourteen, then whipped out the knife. Slit the throat on the next one. Then someone came to the rescue from the side of the house, someone who'd heard the shots and recognized the gun that had fired them. Someone carrying the quiver and arrows. Etewa. Etewa who'd learned the news of the war and left Eames and Arthur on their own. Because he had to go fight, because he had to protect his sister's family. He'd brought word to the Garths, and the old man's heart failed. They flew the gold miner to the town, and Tutemi sent the child, trusting him enough to go fetch the Americans from the cave, because nobody else would_.

xxx

They walked faster from that moment on, driven by fear and proximity of the shelter. As they began climbing up the cliff, covered with old pines, following the path that led to the gated entrance, they heard a helicopter approaching.

A minute later, Arthur saw the heavy, camo-colored body of a Mi-35 cross the sky above their heads and proceed, with a strained roar, in the direction of the warring settlements lost in the sea of green.

"What was that?" Mal asked, when the noise from the Hind E died down.

"The National Guard," replied Dom.

Arthur thought of the dirty-faced, barefoot children playing in the dust in the streets of Barlovento. He remembered the purple cloth covering the entrance to Anjelica's portion of the shabono, the simple clay mugs Coriolano had used to serve his bitter, strong coffee.

"Jerry," he said, struck by a revelation, "what kind of agency does your father work for? Is it DEA? CIA?"

Jerry stumbled and shot a guilty look – not to Arthur, but to the Cobbs.

"He's retired," he said, having decided that denying things wouldn't do any good. "Our house is the base."

When they reached the top of the cliff, and the boy opened the gate of the residence to let them in, Arthur turned and looked at the forest below for the last time. He saw two fat columns of black smoke, rising from where the villages were burning in the depth of the jungle.

xxx

The boat owned by the Garths was a small white Cabo with a hard-top cabin. Junior proved to be an experienced, if a bit reckless driver. Looking at the boy's eyes, narrowed in concentration, at the thin, resolute line of his mouth, Arthur came to realize that the recklessness was inspired not by the wish to show-off, but, in equal measure, by fear and the desire to reach the point of their destination as soon as possible.

Mal was out like a light on a couch in the cabin, as soon as the Cabo left the small wharf behind. Arthur and Dom, both suffering from the most brutal sickness, moved as close as it was possible to the front of the boat. It turned out they felt best sitting right next to the wheel in the cockpit.

As they settled down, Dom took out his wallet, and, without saying a word, handed all the cash it contained to Arthur. A wad of bills, dollars and bolivares.

Arthur shook his head, baffled.

"You'll need it," said Cobb, getting up and pushing the money into his hands, "because as soon as we arrive in town, you're on your own. I forbid you to go with us."

"I'm not afraid," Arthur answered and placed the bills on the floor between them. He remembered about the names scribbled on the back of the map resting in the inside pocket of his hoodie. "I'm going to call Cobol myself when we're in Caracas. We've got to let him know."

"Arthur, did you not hear what he said?" asked Cobb and nodded at the boy who was following their chat with half-hearted interest. "This is more than just corporate espionage. We'll probably be dead before Cobol has time to move a finger."

"Whoever they might be - DEA, CIA – I don't think that's what they're after. They'll want to apprehend you, I'm sure, but not to kill. It would have been easier to do in the jungle, while we were in the cave."

"Don't be naïve," said Dom, pushing the money to Arthur.

Arthur chuckled, feeling like they were two fifteen-year-olds sharing lunches. "I'm not. If it's as serious as it sounds, there's no point trying to escape. Even if I manage to get back to the US, they'll nab me as soon as I get off the plane. Better be prepared and waiting, than running and looking back over your shoulder."

"So what are we doing?"

_He's out of his depth here_, Arthur thought. _I'm the only person he trusts. He'll accept whatever course of action I offer_.

"We're going back to Caracas. Together. All three of us. They'll get in contact, and we'll be expecting them." He paused, thinking over his next words. "Dom, what is it with this drug? I've been to your dream. I can tell from experience that it's worse than ketamine, much worse... But is it really worth it? I mean the murder, the backstabbing..."

"Yes," Dom replied without missing a beat. "Yes, absolutely. Now I can say with all certainty that medical usage is just the tip of the iceberg. I knew it would draw the unwanted attention eventually. I just didn't expect it to be so soon."


	9. Chapter 9 Run On

It was pitch-black dark when they saw the lights of the bridge of Angostura. The town, which lay before it, looked like a cloud of fluorescent bugs in the ocean of darkness.

The Cabo docked into a narrow wharf, reserved for private boats and yachts used for carrying tourists to Angel Falls. Their arrival was accompanied by the howling of house dogs in neighboring streets. The place that must have been a colorful, well-maintained historic town during the day, looked bleak and lonely after dark.

Junior had promised to drive them to the closest hotel that was there. The four of them loaded into an ancient black Camaro waiting in a secure parking lot by the wharf. Arthur noticed that, as they neared the final point of their destination, Jerry got more and more tense and less outspoken. He was answering in monosyllables, and his grip on the wheel turned vice-tight.

They drove through deserted streets, turned the corner of an impressive cathedral in the center of the town and stopped in front of the only well-lit building in the whole place. 'Posada Amor Patrio' read a sign above the gated entrance.

Junior parked at the corner on the opposite side of the street. The gate of the hotel opened and released a mustached man, wearing a gray suit that was glowing white under the streetlights. He was followed by a short, stout woman whose head was covered with a shawl. Together they peered at the car through the dark, as if expecting someone.

"Well, we're here," mumbled Junior and practically ripped the key out of the ignition. He stuffed it in the pocket of his shorts and grabbed his backpack from the floor. As he opened the door on the driver's side, he turned and stared at the three of them, his eyes round with fear. "What are you waiting for?" he uttered through gritted teeth. "Run!" Having said that, he rolled out of the car, leaving them behind, and darted across the dark street in the direction of the hotel building.

"Mom!" Junior's voice broke. "Mom!"

The woman's hands flew up to her mouth. She shot a look at the mustached man and, as if by his signal, walked toward the boy. The shawl slid off her head, and Arthur recognized Etewa's sister. Tutemi and the boy met in the middle of the street. She held him as Jerry hid his face in her chest, his massive back shaking with sobs, the lost child who'd been alone in the jungle, faced death and traveled many miles to finish somebody else's job. Then they started walking, determinedly, supporting each other. They held their heads low, as if blocking out the surroundings, finally safe in their own small bubble. In silence, mother and son crossed the street and disappeared around the corner.

Arthur unbuckled his holster and looked at Dom in the rear-view mirror. Mal buttoned her jacket and gave a shaky nod. Slowly, they stepped out of the car and watched the mustached man approach. He was Asian, tall and agile, his back ramrod-straight, his movements efficient. The man entered the circle of light, and Arthur's breath caught as he took in the perfect harmony in the lines of the understated gray suit that were radiating money and importance. _This is how you should wear your clothes_, Arthur thought almost beside himself.

"Mrs. Cobb. Mr. Cobb." The man acknowledged them with a graceful bow of the head. "Mr. Levine." His eyes, penetrating and wise, lingered on Arthur. "My name is Ryoei Saito. I'm the owner of Saito Engineering. There's no need to feel threatened. It's in our common interest to arrive at a mutually satisfying agreement as soon as possible."

xxx

There were seven of them, crowding the tiny hotel eatery which had been closed for the night, with upturned chairs resting on top of the bar counter and a faded photograph of Papa Hem on the eggshell-colored wall. Had it not been for a police squad waiting outside, the whole set up might have been mistaken for a quiet evening among friends.

Arthur and Dom, with Mal between them, were seated on one side of a dinner table. They were being considered by their captors, two of them caught in a hushed argument in the far corner of the room. These two were an almost comic couple: a tall, blond Brit, who regarded the surroundings with a barely masked disdain and spoke through his teeth, and a stocky, stereotype blue-collar American in a cheap suit. Arthur christened him 'Ned', like a cartoon character, because of the Chevrons decorating his upper lip and the horrible haircut that, in Arthur's opinion, should have stayed in 1980s, along with 'Dynasty' TV series. This thought, however, reminded him of another man, wearing a bushy old-fashioned beard, and he suddenly looked at 'Ned' under a totally different angle.

Ryoei Saito was seated on the opposite side of the table, silently dominating the whole space, aware of his own importance and basking in it. Next to him, looking like he was suffering from a severe headache, sat a man from the American Consulate General, who had refrained from giving his name or rank. He remained silent and avoided looking at Arthur and the Cobbs, as if refusing to accept the mere fact that he was forced to be part of this uneasy situation. Instead, he chose to gaze wistfully at the wall clock hanging on the opposite wall. Arthur couldn't help a furtive smile because he himself, just like the upset official, would rather be elsewhere if given half a chance.

The clock struck nine. The men arguing in the corner stopped, checked the time, and rejoined the group at the table. The bearer of the Chevrons took an empty seat opposite Arthur while the tall, blond one remained standing, leaning against the bar counter.

"Mrs. Cobb. Gentlemen." 'Ned' opened his briefcase and took out three yellow folders which he handed to them.

Seeing their hesitation, he dropped the files on the table in front of Arthur and the Cobbs.

"What's this?" asked Dom, not making a move.

"An employment contract," said Ryoei Saito, "which overruns your current agreement with Cobol and binds you legally to Saito Engineering. It also obligates you to hand over the research material you've accumulated over the duration of your previous contract."

"What does Dr. Cobol think about it?" Mal asked, crossing her arms on her chest, as if fighting a cold.

"What if we refuse?" Cobb spoke at the same time.

"He's got no objections," Saito answered, looking Mal in the eyes. "I can guarantee that."

"You'll be stripped of your academic rank and lose the right to scientific research," 'Ned' replied without missing a bit.

"On what grounds?" Dom's eyes were glued to the yellow folders. Arthur could practically see Cobb's mind working, searching frantically for an escape route.

'Ned' sighed. "Scientific misconduct. Namely suppression of data." He looked at Mal who was staring at them with a wild smile on her face.

"We haven't published anything because there's nothing to publish yet," Dom was gasping for breath by now.

" ," 'Ned' interrupted him, "have you ever heard the term 'controlled dreaming'?" He continued without waiting for an answer: " This is a program developed by the US Ministry of Defense. For the past three years Saito Engineering, which is the exclusive contractor here, have been working on a new type of a sedative, the one that would allow to recreate different scenarios in an individual subconscious. Does it sound familiar? "

Dom kept silent.

"Well, this particular research is considered to be a matter of national security, it wasn't made public for quite obvious reasons. So you can imagine our surprise when about a year and a half ago we were contacted by MI-6," he gestured at the blond, "regarding Somnus Labs in California and a particular research team led by Dr. Malorie Cobb."

The Brit broke the silence: "Two of my operatives, the chemist and the field agent, who'd been integrated into the paramilitary group of Wilber Valera in Valle del Cauca, Colombia, otherwise known as..."

"Los Rastrojos," Arthur finished, remembering the conversation he and Eames had on the way to the gold miner's house.

"Exactly," he nodded. "They informed us that Valera's lieutenant, Diego Rastrojo, via proxy, had initiated a contact with a research facility in California, owned by Cobol Engineering. My operatives were concerned and recommended an immediate intervention. According to their intel, Rastrojo had placed an order with Somnus." He looked at Mal. "Mrs. Cobb, should I try and explain what kind of order that was?"

"To research the plant compounds commonly used in shamanistic practices by the indigenous tribes of Venezuela and Colombia," answered Dom. He looked dazed, as if unable to stomach everything that was being recovered. "And eventually to develop a new sedative, based on those compounds."

"We immediately contacted the American side," continued the Brit.

"And _we_ began monitoring the activities of Somnus," supplied 'Ned'.

"As soon as my field agent was able to obtain a sample of the first version of the drug supplied by your lab, we tested it, with truly shocking results," continued the blond.

"It was never supposed to leave the lab while it was in the trial stage," Mal said, sounding frozen.

"But it did," replied 'Ned'. "On a regular basis. And it was tested by Rastrojo on some of the members of his close entourage."

"We were lucky our field agent was part of that group," said the blond. Arthur thought of Eames's easy smile, of his ability to find a key to almost everyone he was interacting with. "He managed to procure and turn in a sample of each new version and kept us updated on the changes in the side effects."

"It doesn't make any sense," Arthur said, perplexed. "Why would they order a drug from an American lab? They're drug-traffickers, not a pharmaceutical company. They have their," he searched for a word, "plantations, and their own labs. It would be far more convenient to just work on it in Colombia."

"Unless they were trying for something more complicated, than another street drug," Dom said, realizing.

"They must have had their own little military project," Mal said with a sneer, "just like the gentlemen here."

"They did," said the Brit. "Last October, there was a new development. They financed a lab in Caracas. A perfect venue – in a country with a relatively stable regimen, outside of Colombia, so that the connection would be harder to trace, but close enough to exert control."

"And we," continued 'Ned', "had a surprise visit from Dr. Nash."

"Nash like Andrew Nash? Dr. Nash?" Arthur asked.

"He had been appointed head of the Venezuelan laboratory," said 'Ned'

"Who? Nash?" Arthur scoffed. "He got himself fired for, I don't know... Was it incompetence?" He looked at Dom.

"Precisely," said 'Ned'. "He got himself fired. Because he wanted to leave. Isn't it ironic that out of three of you, researchers," he smiled at Mal, "it was Dr. Nash, the least renowned one, who was first to realize what was going on?"

"We employed Dr. Nash in our lab in Langley," said Saito who'd remained silent up to this moment. "His input into our project had been significant."

"You mean my input," Mal retorted. "Because you obviously used my research."

"Yes, we did," Saito said with a curt nod. "And let me assure you, now we have it in full. Including the final version of the formula that the field agent had extracted from your subconscious. However, we feel it would be important to let you continue your work under our supervision."

"Long story short," continued the Brit. "We had to act fast. So we moved the chemist and the field agent to Venezuela. They had been on the case from the very beginning and had had a chance to test the previous versions of the drug."

"Eames and Yusuf?" asked Dom.

The blond nodded. "We made sure our chemist was able to secure an employment with the new lab in Caracas."

"He told me he'd only started in November," Mal confirmed.

"And our field agent joined him a month later. He'd worked as a tracker and wasn't visibly connected with the lab, so we had to create a way out for him."

"The ambush at the Panamanian border," said Arthur.

"Well, he told you already," scoffed the blond.

"According to the data, collected by our operative monitoring the sector," 'Ned' wedged in, "the main source of the compound supplied by Diego Ratsrojo was in the region of the Orinoco river, near a Yanomami settlement called Barlovento."

"This is where we placed Mr. Eames in order to let him run the recon," continued the blond. "And he did with the help of the American side. We were able to determine the exact source of the compound. Which was a certain Eduardo Antonio Robles, otherwise known as Arasuwe, a citizen of Venezuela and a shaman of one of the indigenous tribes. Mr. Eames began monitoring Arasuwe's activities as a drug dealer, he was able to procure the compounds used by the shaman. He also participated in all the test runs during Mr. Attal's research. Unfortunately, despite his knowledge of the language and the available financial resources, he couldn't make Arasuwe share the technology he used to develop his drug. We were at the impasse."

"So were we," said Dom, "until Mal decided to go to Venezuela and continue the research there, in proximity of the source."

"Two years of research," said Mal, "Five months spent between the lab and a cave in the jungle. Millions of dollars spent on the work that you've appropriated for yourself."

"Millions of drug dollars," said the Brit with a chuckle.

"Mrs. Cobb, I understand the amount of pressure you've been under these past few months," said Saito, looking Mal in the eyes. "We respect and value your achievement. Nobody wants to steal it from you. We'd like to give you a chance to bring more to our common table." He took one of the folders and shuffled through the papers it held, his gaze pensive, his big, pampered hands moving gently over the white pages.

"If we sign it, are we allowed to go back to Los Angeles?" Cobb asked, hesitant.

"Cobol's license was revoked," said Saito after a pause. "Somnus Labs, as you knew it, doesn't exist anymore. I'm afraid, moving to Virginia in order to continue your research at Saito Engineering is the only option available to you."

Arthur felt dizzy. This was it. He didn't have a job anymore. He was alone on the street, just like four years before when he landed at his mother's doorstep in Corona after his third tour in Afghanistan. Arthur who had always reprimanded Mal for treating him like one of her own kids suddenly wanted to grab her hands and beg her not to sign anything, because she _was_ part of Arthur's family and so was Dom, no matter how persistent Arthur was in his denial. And this contract was going to separate them, for good.

For a short second, life ceased to make sense. Then Arthur got angry. Who were these people who could take his life and twist it out of shape, send him back to where he'd started, destroy everything he had built with diligence and hard work? What was he supposed to do now? Try and claim back his post at an enterprise that was no more. Get back to Inter-Con Security and again suffer through a neverending line of sweet sixteens and after parties?

"What do you expect _me_ to bring to our common table?" he sneered at the men sitting in front of him, furious, letting his anger be seen.

"I don't know about Mr. Saito here, but _we_ could probably find something that would suit an individual with your set of skills," answered 'Ned'.

"Something that would _suit..._" Arthur's eyebrows crawled up his face of their own accord. "You've sacrificed hundreds of people, including a priest, in order to cover up your tracks. Your employees steal, lie and murder." He shrugged. "I'm afraid I possess no skills that would make _me_suitable for this kind of job."

"Now listen to me," said the Brit, his voice tight with indignation. "I couldn't care less about the kind of employment you find acceptable. You _will_sign the contract we offer and make yourself look extremely useful while doing so. Because as we speak here, two of my best operatives are pending investigation and you, Mr. Levine, and you, Doctors," he looked at the Cobbs, "will help me prove to the high-ranking knobs that my agents had not committed a grave misconduct by letting you keep your useless – in their opinion – lives." He lowered himself on an empty chair, took a chrome fountain pen out of the front pocket of his jacket and threw it on the table in front of them. A drop of sweat which he ignored ran down his forehead. He was breathing heavily, trying to fight the anger that was rising in him.

Dom and Mal looked at each other. Mal took the pen, biting her lip, and opened one of the folders. As she began reading what looked like at least sixty pages of narrow print, 'Ned' handed a much more modest-looking pen to Dom.

"Mr. Levine," said Saito after a moment's silence. "What kind of degree do you hold?"

"BS in Criminal Justice," said Arthur, "from ALU in Pasadena."

"Are you averse to art?"

"No," Arthur asked. "Why?"

"Would you find it tedious, if you had, as part of your duties, to ensure the security of a private art collection?"

"Where?" Arthur asked, expecting to hear an oversees destination.

"The Saito Center," said Saito with a shrug, as if stating something obvious, "in Brentwood, Los Angeles."

xxx

_Arthur's first thoughts awake are always physical. He thinks: It's nice to sleep on a bed, not on the rough floor, not on the wet ground, not in a hammock or an airplane armchair, however comfortable it might seem. It's nice to sleep on clean sheets, under a warm comforter, knowing that you won't have to get up and run somewhere as soon as you wake up. Arthur hauls himself up, brushing away the hair that falls into his eyes and looks around the room. On the bed by the window Cobb is waiting for him, quiet and discreet as usual. He is fully dressed and reading the local newspaper he has, no doubt, brought all the way down from Caracas. It is almost two weeks old. Cobb lifts his eyes from the wrinkled page and looks at Arthur over his reading glasses. It's already morning, the first light is creeping out from under red-and green-painted shutters on a small window. Time to move out._

_He doesn't ask why Dom waits in his room._

_Some time past midnight, after the papers were signed and the police squad departed to where it came from. After the man from the Consulate handed them their new passports instead of the ones that had been lost in the village. After 'Ned' and the blond shook hands in the street, and 'Ned' smirked, satisfied with the outcome of the evening, and the Brit smiled openly at him, triumphant and relieved. After Saito wished them a pleasant flight home before disappearing into the night, the owner of the place, white with fear and weariness, led them up the stairs to the empty rooms and left them there, alone with their thoughts._

_The short night got Arthur going through his usual repertoire of sad, wretched dreams. And Dom and Mal came, not long before sunrise, when the darkness was at its most profound. They knocked and threatened to break the door, and yelled until he let them in. And then they refused to leave. And they slept, the two of them, on the single bed by the window, unperturbed by the squeeze, guarding Arthur's repose, the family he would never have._

_Arthur can hear a faucet being turned with a metallic shriek. The shower stops running. Mal is getting ready in the room behind the wall. He gets off the bed and asks Cobb to leave because Arthur is an adult and doesn't need a sitter. Dom huffs and groans as he folds the newspaper and stands. He begins to give his usual nonsense about Arthur not feeling well and Mal wanting to keep tabs on him. And this is when Arthur decides to ask._

_"Dom, how long have you known?"_

_Cobb tenses, looking caged, and then relaxes when Arthur continues: "About Eames. You must have understood before. You always do."_

_"Since day one," Cobb answers and sits back on the bed. "Now he wasn't really trying to hide, was he?" Arthur stares at Dom's face, freshly shaven, with the trace of the bruise still visible on his temple. Arthur is analyzing, trying to understand._

_"But you still went."_ And led me with you. _"Why?"_

_"It didn't really matter who he was," Cobb says and rubs at his mouth, his eyes fixed at the Blessed Virgin on the wooden table. The candle has died, and the weak smoke is dissipating in the air. "As long as he would take me to Mal."_

_Arthur stands there and looks at Dom._

_It's as simple as that. Mal was dying. Dom was running out of time, he would have gone with the devil, he would have died on this search and dragged the whole world with him if that was what it took to save her. Arthur didn't matter, neither did anybody else._

_"You have no kids of your own," Dom says, his eyes shining, an almost fanatical, luminous glare. "You have no idea what it's like to see your children suffer, day after day, withering away in sadness, and not be able to do anything." He quickly wipes the tears off, stingy as he is with emotions, disapproving of his own outburst. Rigid. Forever loyal to his own code. "I had to bring her back. Without her, there would be no us."_

xxx

_Arthur's last dream in the Amazon is about an island in the Indian Ocean. He is standing on the edge of an all-sand reef, separated from the rest of the beach by a narrow strip of water. If he looks back over his shoulder, he will see an indistinct silhouette of a man walking deeper into the land, towards the lighthouse on top of a rocky hill, away from the shore. But Arthur won't look back. He chooses to stay on the beach and follow the movement of a tiny dingy, carrying two fishermen to the coast, as it bobs up and down the arriving ways. He won't look away because if he does, the boat will be lost at sea._

_Ages ago, in a different life, if someone asked Arthur Levine to use one word to describe this whole expedition they had set out upon, this word would be 'infuriating'. From the very beginning, he had a deep-seated feeling that their journey was a lost cause. They would never find Mal, and if they found her, it would be her bones. However, Arthur in that different life was not prone to premonitions and only trusted things he could actually see and touch._


End file.
